Media Notes / Forged in the Dark

Forged in the Dark is an open-source Game System originally designed by John Harper of one.seven design for his groundbreaking 2017 Tabletop RPG Blades in the Dark. Its System Reference Document, containing the core rules and mechanics of the game, is available under the CC-BY 3.0 license, meaning that anyone can adapt it to their own game systems for free, as long as they link back to the original. The "Forged in the Dark" brand belongs to one.seven, but again, anyone can use it for their Blades-based products as long as they acknowledge said ownership.

Compare and contrast its close relative, Powered by the Apocalypse, based on Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World.

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Games under the Forged in the Dark license

• Adrenaline (2020): A Post-Cyberpunk game about a crew of Thrill Seekers running dangerous jobs mostly for the kicks.
• Band of Blades (2018): A military Dark Fantasy game about a squad of survivors retreating after a disastrous battle against The Undead.
• Beam Saber (2019): A far-future Humongous Mecha warfare game about a squad of mech pilots fighting for factions seeking to control the galaxy.
• Blades in the Dark (2017): The original game about a crew of scoundrels surviving in the underworld of a Gothic Steampunk city.
• Candela Obscura (2023): While not labeled "Forged in the Dark" by the creators, the latter acknowledge Blades as a major inspiration and influence on it.
• Copperhead County (TBR): A "Southern noir" game of organized crime and political corruption in contemporary-but-fictionalized Tennessee^note inspired by shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Wire.
• Girl by Moonlight (2023): A Magical Girl game with playsets all over the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism^note including a Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction playset not unlike Princess: The Hopeful.
• Hack the Planet (2019): A Cyberpunk-meets-Global Warming game about fighting the system in a MegaCorp-run Mega City.
• Rebel Crown (2020): A game of feudal politics and conflict, putting players in the shoes of an exiled rightful heir and their loyal retinue.
• Sig City Of Blades (2021): Transplants the original Blades concept of a scoundrel crew to a city that bears more than a few passing similarities to a certain city of doors.
• Scum and Villainy (2018): A Space Western game about the Badass Crew of a Cool Starship freelancing in the Standard Sci Fi Setting.
• Wicked Ones (2021): A medieval fantasy game heavily inspired by Dungeon Keeper about playing a group of Villain Protagonist monsters trying to develop and maintain a dungeon staffed with evil minions and filled with plunder taken from those hapless do-gooders as they work towards their nefarious goals.

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System Overview

Unlike the aforementioned Apocalypse World and its descendants, which put a lot of focus on characterization of and on relationships between Player Characters, Blades and its progeny are mainly about action — not just in the Action Genre sense, but in that the players must proactively challenge the status quo of their imagined world and change things within it. This focus is evident in everything from the core mechanic (the action rolls) to various cut-to-the-action techniques (see Scores below) and makes the system less suited for more contemplative, character-driven games.^note Naturally, your group can play whatever system and setting you want however you want, but the core design of FitD just has more mechanics for acting and changing than for self-reflection and slow-burn exploration.

The Core Mechanic: Action Rolls

Whenever you want to get something done that is fraught with danger or risk of failure in a FitD game, announce what you want your character to accomplish, build a pool of six-sided dice, and roll them. If the highest roll in your pool is a 6, you get what you wanted; if it's a 4 or a 5, you get what you wanted but there is a catch — a negative consequence or two, chosen by the Game Master; on a 1 through 3, you only get consequences instead. If you roll two or more 6s, it's a Critical Hit: you get what you wanted with a cherry on top; but if your pool, for any reason, ends up with no dice in it, you instead roll 2d and take the lower result (you also cannot crit in this case: two 6s are just a regular full success).

How many dice are in your pool depends mainly on which action rating you are using. An action rating is simply a verb describing your interaction with the game world, such as Prowl, Study, or Command, with a numeric rating from 0 to 4 attached to it^note an important distinction between classical RPG stats and FitD-style action ratings is that the latter aren't tied to a particular trait or an area of expertise: a high Skirmish rating just means that your character often comes out on top in straight-up fights, and it's up to you whether they do so through brute strength, extensive training, or dirty tricks: so if you are trying to Prowl past the patrolling guards and your Prowl action rating is 3, your base pool size is 3d. These verbs are system- and setting-specific^note e.g. Scum and Villainy includes Hack, which wasn't in the original Blades for obvious reasons, but typically general enough to cover a broad variety of actions^note the best example is Hunt from Blades, which can cover everything from tracking down a missing person, through setting up an ambush or a trap, to sniping someone from a safe distance. A typical FitD game has twelve action ratings grouped into three attributes (usually Insight, Prowess, and Resolve), and a new character gets seven points (dots) to distribute among them.^note A common piece of advice given to new players (owing to how stress relief works in the baseline Blades) is to have dots in at least one or, better yet, two different action ratings within each attribute, in order to maintain manageable stress levels in the long-term.

An action roll consists of a very specific sequence of interactions:

1. The player announces what their character wants to accomplish.
2. The player chooses an action rating to do so.^note It is very important to that the player chooses the action and that the GM can never demand a specific action roll from them, like they would in most other systems. The GM can, however, demand an action roll and also veto the player's choice if it doesn't match what is happening in the game, e.g. if they describe running for their life, but choose a Study roll to resolve it.
3. The Game Master sets the position of the chosen action in the given situation: controlled, risky, or desperate.^note This mainly determines the severity of negative consequences that will happen if the player rolls below a full success. The default position is risky. Any action from a desperate position nets you an Experience Point (see Advancement below), regardless of its outcome.
4. The GM sets the effect of the chosen action in the given situation: limited, standard, or great.^note This determines whether you will get all that you wanted, some of it, or all of it and more if you roll a success. The default effect is standard. The GM can also declare "zero effect", which just means that even if successful, the chosen action will not reach the desired goal unless the player has some ability to raise it back up; or name a dominant factor that prevents the action from having any effect, regardless of the PC's abilities, until it is somehow dealt with — this accounts for "impossible" tasks like bringing down a stone tower with a sledgehammer.
   At this point, the player can backpedal to step 2 and narrate a different approach to probe if the GM will give them a better position or effect. What they cannot do is to argue with the GM that their action should be less risky or more effective — that judgement call is the GM's alone.
5. Optionally, the player adds bonus dice to their pool.^note +1d if another PC assists them in-game and takes 1 stress (see below) and another +1d if the PC either pushes themselves (takes 2 stress) or accepts a Devil's Bargain from the GM (a negative side-effect that always occurs, regardless of the roll result). There may be additional rules for bonus dice in newer systems, but these two are the baseline.
6. The player rolls the dice and adjudicates the outcome together with the GM.^note Since the NPCs never roll for their actions, the player's action roll pulls a double duty of resolving both their and the NPC's activities.

For a mathematically inclined reader, the exact probabilities of each outcome for every legal dice pool size are listed below:

Roll	1-3	4/5	6	CRIT
0d	75.0%	22.2%	2.8%	0.0%
1d	50.0%	33.3%	16.7%	0.0%
2d	25.0%	44.4%	27.8%	2.8%
3d	12.5%	45.4%	34.7%	7.4%
4d	6.3%	42.0%	38.6%	13.2%
5d	3.1%	37.1%	40.2%	19.6%
6d	1.6%	31.9%	40.2%	26.3%

Consequences, Harm, Resistance Rolls, and Stress

Any time the player rolls less-than-perfectly (i.e. anything other than a full or critical success), the GM is free to assign one or more consequences to their character's action^note though negating a successful roll outright is against the rules, and consequences should rather be thought of as "hard" MC moves from Apocalypse World. A consequence can range from reduced effect or a lost opportunity to general complications and lasting harm, and its severity depends on the position established before the roll. Because there are no Hit Points in this system, harm is simply a consequence whose effects persist beyond the current scene and until treated. In other words, the system averts Critical Existence Failure by stacking penalties for each injury, whether it's bodily, mental, or social, long before it kills you:

1. Level 1 injuries^note e.g. Battered, Drained, Distracted, Scared, Confused — there is no fixed list of possible injuries, and the GM can just pick any descriptor and assign an appropriate harm level to it are sustained in controlled situations and automatically reduce the effect of any action roll that they hamper by one level.
2. Level 2 injuries^note e.g. Exhausted, Deep Cut to Arm, Concussion, Panicked, Seduced come from risky situations and reduce the dice pools for action rolls that they hamper by −1d.
3. A level 3 injury^note e.g. Impaled, Broken Leg, Shot in Chest, Badly Burned, Terrified results from a desperate situation and renders the character unable to make action rolls except by pushing themselves.

A PC can have two level 1, two level 2, and one level 3 injury: if there are no more "slots" for another injury at its level, it rolls over into the next higher one. An injury beyond level 3 (level 4^note e.g. Electrocuted, Drowned, Stabbed in the Heart) is instantly fatal, but if it results from a level 3 "rolling over", the GM can decide to replace it with a permanent, catastrophic consequence, such as a limb loss.

Here is the biggest kicker, though: a player can dodge or reduce any consequence the GM assigns to them^note except Devil's Bargains, which are emphatically not "consequences" and are instead avoided by simply not accepting them simply by announcing that their character resists it. A resistance roll is automatically successful^note though whether it lets you avoid the consequence entirely or just reduces its severity is up to the GM — in fact, this is their main tool for setting the tone of the game to more daring or to more gritty, respectively and its result only determines how much stress it costs you: the GM decides which attribute you must resist with, and you roll as many dice as you have action ratings above 0 in that attribute. The final cost is 6 minus your highest roll — this is how much stress you take^note if you roll a crit, you relieve 1 stress instead. This simple mechanic puts a lot of power in the players' hands, while also freeing the GM to go as hard as they want on them — after all, if they're unhappy with anything bad the GM does to them, they can always resist it.

Stress is an abstract resource representing a Player Character's fortitude. Resistance rolls are the most unpredictable source of stress, but you can also take stress to push yourself^note to get +1d to an action roll, to increase its effect level by one, or to make an action roll while suffering a level 3 harm, to assist another, to activate special abilities, or to invoke flashbacks (see bellow). Stress is relieved during downtime by indulging your vices (see below), whereas accumulating a total of 9 stress leads to a permanent trauma condition (such as Paranoid, Unstable, or Vicious) and puts you out of the action for a time. If you accrue four traumas, you must immediately retire your character from play, as they are too psychologically broken to continue.

Again, for the mathematically inclined, here are the expected stress costs for each legal resistance roll^note 5d and 6d rolls are legal by stacking bonuses from multiple special abilities giving +1d to certain resistance rolls:

	0d	1d	2d	3d	4d	5d	6d
Mean	3.5	2.5	1.5	1.0	0.6	0.4	0.2
Median	4.0	2.5	1.0	1.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Mode	5.0	2.5	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0

Coincidentally, the above table can also be used to estimate the effectiveness of Indulge Vice rolls by subtracting each cell value from 6 (e.g. the mean expected result of an Indulge Vice roll with 1d is 6 − 2.5 = 3.5)^note because Indulge Vice and resistance rolls resolve CRITs differently, this procedure overestimates the former's effectiveness with dice pools of 2d or larger by 1-5% — an error that is negligible for all practical purposes.

Advancement

A player character in FitD typically has four Experience Meters: a longer one for the playbook (see below) and three shorter ones for the attributes. Completely filling in an attribute XP track lets you put another dot into one of its action ratings, while filling in the playbook track allows you to pick an additional special ability^note from your own or from another playbook, although these latter "veteran" advancements are limited to three per character. As mentioned above, any action roll from a desperate position nets you an XP in the corresponding attribute track. At the end of each session, you can also gain up to six XP to distribute freely among the tracks if you have done any of the following during that session:

• Addressed one or more challenges in a way that is appropriate for your chosen playbook — i.e. you've played your part for the team;
• Expressed your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background — i.e. you've actually role-played your character; and/or
• Struggled with issues from your vice or trauma (if any) — i.e. you've played out your character's long-term afflictions.

These are known as your XP triggers. Note that almost all XP in this system are Non-Combat EXP^note combat-oriented playbooks typically do get XP for violent conflict resolutions, but not for how many people they kill, so even though its focus is on action, you shouldn't forget to role-play your character in said action if you want to advance.

GM's Tools: Fortune Rolls and Progress Clocks

Two of the main types of dice rolls in FitD (action and resistance) are an exclusive domain of the players: the Game Master participates in their adjudication, but never rolls for themselves. However, there is the third type, the fortune rolls, which are used by the GM whenever a) a situation must be resolved without the PCs' direct intervention^note e.g. two gangs duking it out off-screen or b) an outcome is uncertain, but no other roll applies. Note that in both cases, the GM is well within their rights to just make a judgement call, but if they'd rather defer to the Random Number God, fortune rolls are their tool of choice.

To make a fortune roll, the GM articulates a question, builds a dice pool based on any relevant numeric trait rating^note a PC's action rating, a faction's Tier, a gang's size or quality, a supernatural effect's magnitude, etc. — there are rules in the book for every one of these that are too involved for this overview, and rolls it. Like with action rolls, a result of 1-3 is usually a failure, 4/5 is mixed or partial success, 6 is a full success, and two or more 6s is an exceptional success. A particularly common fortune roll is gathering information, where a player looks for clues without an immediate danger or time pressure to warrant an action roll: instead, the GM makes a fortune roll with the PC's relevant action rating and gives the player the information their character uncovers accordingly.

Another important tool in the GM's kit are the progress clocks: abstract representations of complex obstacles that the players have to overcome^note i.e. ones that cannot be bypassed or resolved with a single action roll or of processes occurring in the background^note which can take from several rolls to several sessions to resolve. A clock can have four, six, or eight segments, which are usually filled in ("ticked") one by one, and once it's full, something happens in the fiction: the players clear the obstacle, the alarm is sounded, a rival faction reaches its goal, etc.

How many clock segments are ticked at once depends on its purpose. Obstacle clocks, such as security measures or tough enemies, are ticked when an action roll succeeds: once for a limited effect, twice for standard, and triply for great^note or even five ticks at once if you manage to raise the effect beyond great, e.g. by pushing yourself for it and then rolling a crit. A danger clock, such as alarm or time pressure, is instead ticked as a consequence of an action roll: once in a controlled position, twice when risky, or triply when desperate — though, of course, the players can choose to resist that consequence, reducing the number of ticks accordingly. Finally, clocks can be advanced with fortune rolls: one tick for 1-3, two for 4/5, three for a 6, and five for a crit, — hopefully, this illustrates how beautifully all parts of this game system feed into one another when utilized to their full potential!

Playbooks and Crews

Just like in systems Powered by the Apocalypse, each Player Character has a particular playbook that serves as a rough template for their characterization. The playbooks are system- and setting-specific, there are typically at least seven of them, and unlike in PbtA, a group is not restricted by rules to a single instance of each at any given time. A FitD playbook commonly fits on a single page and has following information on it:

• A snappy archetype name and a one-line description of it
• Name, alias, looks, and crew affiliation
• Heritage^note where in the game world the character comes from and background^note what they did for a living before joining the crew
• Vice^note what they do to relieve stress — usually involves some kind of addiction, hence the name and its purveyor^note an NPC from whom they receive their regular fixes
• Current levels of stress, trauma, and harm
• Action and attribute ratings
• A list of special abilities^note Each playbook has a unique set of special abilities, getting one at character creation and unlocking more with XP. Typically, a playbook's most useful ability is placed at the top of the list as the "default" starting option.
• A list of playbook-specific contacts^note NPCs in the game world whom the PC knows: the player additionally marks one of them as their Best Friend and one, as The Rival.
• A list of playbook-specific and generic gear
• A playbook-specific XP trigger
• XP tracks for the playbook (special abilities) and individual attributes
• Coin and Stash^note abstract representations of their personal liquid capital and general prosperity/savings

In addition to the PCs' individual playbooks, which are templates for their respective Character Arcs, the group as a whole (a.k.a. the crew) has a shared crew playbook, which serves as a template for the campaign's Myth Arc. By choosing a particular crew playbook, the players agree upon and signal to the GM that this is the kind of campaign they would like to play^note which is why it's often recommended to skip the crew playbook in one-shots or to postpone its choice until after the first score of a campaign, i.e. after the players have a clearer idea of how their characters fit together. The original Blades came with six crew playbooks, but most FitD games have around three. A crew playbook is even more dependent on the genre and setting than character ones, but typically contains the following:

• The name of the crew archetype and a one-line description
• The crew's own name and reputation^note the latter is usually picked from a setting-appropriate list and affects how other factions deal with its members
• Crew tier^note an abstract representation of its resources, in particular of its manpower (scale) and equipment (quality) and mainly relevant in the Faction Game (see below) and its liquid capital
• A crew-, genre-, and setting-specific map of long-term crew improvements^note e.g. claims and lair upgrades in Blades, ship modules and upgrades in SaV, etc.
• A list of special abilities^note similar to the character playbooks', but benefiting the entire crew
• A single crew XP track^note when filled, the crew can usually pick a new special ability or two crew upgrades
• A list of crew XP triggers^note typically, one of these is specific to the crew playbook, while three others are generic
• A list of crew-specific contacts^note one of whom the players additionally mark as their "favorite"

In addition to giving a direction to the campaign, the crew playbook also facilitates a strong group identity among the players by giving them a common purpose. Thanks to this, new PC introductions^note in case an old one retires or dies, or a new player joins the group to replace an AWOL regular are much smoother, while any nascent PvP conflict is effectively curbed by reminding the players engaging in it of their commitment to the campaign goals.

Scores, Flashbacks, and Downtime

Whenever a crew wants to enact a major change in the game world, a score is called for. A score is essentially any planned group endeavor with a clearly defined goal, and the flow of play and narration in FitD games is structured around the core loop of executing a score, enjoying the downtime, then entering free play again to plan the next score. Unlike other score-based RPGs^note looking at you, Shadowrun, which are plagued by boring and often superfluous contingency planning, FitD assumes that while the characters prepare their scores in minute detail, the players don't have to. Consequently, it employs a number of so-called cut to the action techniques^note described below as planning, load, engagement roll, and flashbacks to skip over most of said planning and to put the players In Medias Res of an operation already underway, effectively gamifying the Unspoken Plan Guarantee trope. This is how it works:

1. The players articulate their next score's goal^note e.g. "to steal a priceless piece of art from the Lord Governor's mansion".
2. The players choose the type of plan their characters have put together^note Assault, Deception, Stealth, Occult, Social, or Transport.
3. The players come up with a plan type-specific detail to make it work.^note It's important that the detail comes after the goal and the overall plan are already decided — in fact, if the players cannot come up with anything right away, it's perfectly legal to gather information for a plan's detail, calling upon the GM to help them out.
4. The players choose the load their characters go into the score with.^note This limits how much gear they embark on the score with — but not which gear they take with them. Instead, they only check off specific items when they need them, retroactively adding them to their inventory on demand. The trade-off of going in with a heavier load is that you look a lot more suspicious.
5. The GM makes a special fortune roll called the engagement roll to determine how the score starts and jump-cuts to its first obstacle.^note The rules for building the dice pool for this roll and interpreting its result are rather involved, but it essentially gauges the crew's preparedness for the score and randomizes their initial position accordingly.
6. The players play out the score, making action and resistance rolls and using teamwork and flashbacks (see below).
7. Once the players either achieve or give up on their goal, the score ends and the game enters the downtime phase.

Teamwork lets player characters help each other out on scores: by assisting another, a player takes 1 stress and gives them +1d on their action roll; to set up an action, a player makes an action roll, which, if successful, improves either the position, or the effect of any action roll that follows through on it; by protecting a teammate, another player character automatically takes a consequence for them (and can resist it normally); and finally, in a group action, all PCs make the same action roll, and the overall highest result counts for everyone — but one PC must volunteer to lead the effort and takes 1 stress for every participant who rolls a 1-3.^note This effectively solves the ages-old problem of Useless Useful Stealth in traditional RPGs, where one bad roll from the least stealthy party member is all it takes to bring the whole group's sneaking effort crashing down. With a FitD-style group action, the Stealth Expert can now carry the whole team, only suffering minor stress from the others' blunders.

Flashbacks are a mechanic that allows players to fully weaponize the Unspoken Plan Guarantee by retroactively preparing for challenges after they happen, instead of guessing which ones might happen. Because FitD rules do not distinguish between actions in the present and in the past, a player can, at any point during a score, invoke a flashback and perform an action roll or two in the past to retroactively improve the current situation. The only difference is that flashbacks typically have a stress cost attached to them by the GM^note the more complicated the contingency, the more stress it costs — however, trivial preparations may cost no stress at all; in fact, checking off an item from your playbook's gear list (as long as you have free load for it) is effectively a 0-stress flashback of you packing that item before embarking on the score. Note, however, that flashbacks cannot Retcon things that have already happened in-game: if you are busted by a police patrol, you cannot retroactively change its route... but you can have already paid off the officer leading them to let you go once he recognizes you.

The downtime is a special game phase that follows immediately after each score. First, the GM adjudicates the score's payoff^note and is explicitly forbidden by the rules to invoke the Treacherous Quest Giver trope and fallout^note usually manifesting in their Wanted Meter going up and one or more entanglements that will catch up with the crew before the next score. Then, the players can engage in downtime activities, e.g. to treat injuries, to relieve stress by indulging their vices, or to work on personal long-term projects — the first two activities (per character) after a score are free, additional ones must be purchased with cash or prestige. After this downtime, the game returns to free play, where the players can deal with any entanglements, explore, and plan their next score.

Faction Game

In the original Blades, the faction game was a hugely important subsystem simulating the political situation on the streets of Duskwall and the crew's place within it. While this aspect tends to be deemphasized in less politically-oriented FitD games, some aspects of it often carry over, in particular:

• Tier is a measure of wealth, influence, and scale assigned to each faction in the setting. The players' own crew normally starts out at Tier 0 and can rise up to Tier III or IV, depending on the game, with the ultimate Tiers V and VI reserved for The Government and MegaCorp-equivalents. The Tier determines the quality of a faction's equipment and experts and the scale of its subordinate gangs. Tier is logarithmic in scale, so a faction is roughly two times bigger, richer, and better equipped than any one on the next lower Tier.^note Mechanically, both quality and scale factor into the position and effect levels of action rolls where they are relevant: for instance, a burglar with Tier 0 lockpicks will have to get very creative to overcome the best security measures deployed by a Tier V faction, while a Tier I-sized gang of 3-6 people will be in a desperate position when fighting a Tier III-sized one (of 20).
• Status is an indication of how much a given faction likes or dislikes the player crew, ranging from −3 to +3^note and it is only tracked for the players' crew, since doing so for each NPC faction among themselves would be a combinatorial nightmare. The lower the rating, the further the faction would go to interfere with the crew and with its scores, and conversely, the higher it is, the more assistance it will offer. If a crew is at a −3 status with any other faction, they're considered to be at war with it^note placing them at some hefty disadvantages, such as the Wanted Meter going up faster after scores, and the crew members getting only one free downtime activity instead of two until they either eliminate the hostile faction, or negotiate a mutual agreement with it, raising their status back up.

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