Forged in the Dark (2017)

Blades in the Dark is a heist-themed tabletop roleplaying game system about a crew of daring misfits  on the streets of an industrial fantasy city. Published by Evil Hat Productions in 2017 and designed by John Harper, it introduced the highly influential Forged in the Dark rules engine. BitD revolutionized the heist genre in tabletop gaming by pushing players straight into the act, eliminating the "planning phase". The system it loosely evolved from is Apocalypse World Description In Blades in the Dark, players are part of a criminal organization in Doskvol, a grim Victorian era city. The city is protected by a wall of lightning, to keep any threat on the outside. Players create their characters as either smugglers, thieves, assassins or cultists and explore the criminal underworld, perform dangerous heists, manage gang warfare and grow their criminal organization. The game focuses heavily on narrative momentum and failing forward. Characters are competent but flawed, constantly accumulating stress, trauma, and heat from the law as their gang rises to power. System Overview & Key Features Action Roll (d6 Dice Pool) The core mechanic uses a pool of six-sided dice(d6) based on a character's action rating. The highest die result will determine the outcome of the action. 6 is considered a full success, 4-5 is a partial success with a consequence, and 1-3 is a failure. Rolling multiple full successes is considered a critical success. Position and Effect Before every roll, the Game Master explicitly states the character's Position (Controlled, Risky, or Desperate) and Effect (Limited, Standard, or Great). This transparently communicates the exact stakes and potential fallout of the action before the dice hit the table. Stress and Resistance Characters have a Stress track. Players can spend Stress to give themselves for extra dice when rolling. They can also use it to assist an ally, or fuel their special abilities. Players can also spend Stress when facing any situation or consequence the GM throws at them, this makes the characters very skilled, but forces them to consider when to spend it. The Flashback Mechanic Instead of spending hours planning a heist, the crew simply chooses a target, picks a detail, and jumps right into the action. Later, they can use Stress, to envoke a flashback moment, where they explain how they had already planned for such a situation, or had "solved" it beforehand. Progress Clocks The game uses circular progress tracks called Clocks to visually represent approaching danger or the progress of a complex task. A clock might represent the alert level of the city watch, the structural integrity of a safe vault, or the patience of a rival gang leader. The Crew as a Character The criminal organization the players run has its own character sheet. The organization gains experience, levels up, claims territory, and unlocks special abilities, ensuring that the gang's rise to power is just as mechanically significant as the characters'

Scum and Villainy is a space opera tabletop roleplaying game about a crew of outlaws getting by on a ship under the Galactic Hegemony, written by Stras Acimovic and John LeBoeuf-Little. It is a stand-alone game based on the Blades in the Dark system, using the Forged in the Dark engine, and its setting draws on Star Wars, Firefly and Cowboy Bebop. Evil Hat Productions published the hardcover edition on 2 August 2018, produced in partnership with Off Guard Games, the studio behind the original. The Evil Hat book runs to 368 pages in black and white. A 2018 Gnome Stew review recommended it for players who want narrative play with enough rules to support a story arc. The system is a Forged in the Dark game built on Blades in the Dark, and it is the space version of that heist game. Description Players take on a ship's crew in the Procyon Sector, a region of four star systems with factions grouped as Hegemony, Weirdness and Criminal. Their jobs involve dealing with syndicates, noble families, aliens and mystics, and exploring ruins. The Game Master (GM) runs the jobs and the crew's progress from a struggling outfit to a well-known one. The Way, an energy field, underpins the rules for artifacts. The game asks a table to improvise and to commit to a plan late. Jobs start in the middle of the action through an engagement roll, so a group does not spend a session planning. The ship has its own sheet and upgrades, and the crew's rise through the sector is part of the game. It suits groups who like heists, found-family crews and a space setting without a fixed plot.

Fate Core is a generic tabletop roleplaying game system for character-driven stories in any genre, written by Fred Hicks, Rob Donoghue and Leonard Balsera among others and published by Evil Hat Productions in 2013. It is the fourth edition of Fate, a system that Hicks and Donoghue first released through a Yahoo! group in early 2003 and that Evil Hat published that summer, as a derivative of Fudge. The third edition (2006) powered Spirit of the Century and The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game. Fate Core was funded on Kickstarter, where it raised $433,365 against a $3,000 goal, and it was released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence (CC BY 3.0) and the Open Game License (OGL), so anyone can publish a Fate game without asking permission. The system has won multiple ENnie Awards and Indie RPG Awards. The system directly evolved from Fudge, and it has two published variants in Fate Accelerated Edition and Fate Condensed. Description Players take on competent protagonists defined by a few phrases about who they are, and the Game Master (GM) frames scenes in which those phrases get tested. Fate has no fixed setting, so the group first decides what kind of story it is telling, from pulp adventure to a modern urban fantasy, and builds characters to suit it. The game asks a table to talk about the fiction as much as roll for it. Players must be willing to let their own characters' flaws make trouble for them, in exchange for a resource they will spend later, and the system works best when everyone pitches in ideas. It tends to be less satisfying for groups who want a tactical simulation of weapons and gear.

Let’s Get Critical is an actual play podcast where five friends bring original characters and a custom world to life through immersive roleplay, collaborative storytelling, and the unpredictable magic of Dungeons & Dragons 5E.  With a strong focus on narrative, character development, and in-the-moment improv, each episode blends epic fantasy, emotional depth, and a fair amount of chaotic energy. Whether you're a longtime TTRPG fan or new to the genre, there's a seat at our table—and the dice are already rolling. Let’s get critical!

One Realm is an AI-assisted campaign workspace and virtual tabletop built for groups that want to play tomorrow—not spend the week preparing. It turns adventures, source material, and campaign notes into an organized, playable world, helping GMs complete work that might otherwise take hours or days in a matter of minutes. Characters, locations, encounters, maps, relationships, and story events are automatically organized and connected. From there, the GM can prepare scenes, create artwork, manage characters, and run the game through the integrated virtual tabletop. Because everything shares the same campaign context, preparation flows directly into play without rebuilding the session across multiple tools.

7th Sea Second Edition is a swashbuckling tabletop roleplaying game of high adventure, intrigue and romance in Théah, a magical continent inspired by 17th-century Europe, published by John Wick Presents in 2016. It was written by John Wick, Mike Curry, Rob Justice, Mark Diaz Truman and Jesse Heinig. AEG transferred the publication rights to John Wick Presents in 2015, and the second edition was crowdfunded on Kickstarter in March 2016 with the core rules appearing in June 2016. It won six ENNIE Awards in 2017. In 2019 Chaosium acquired 7th Sea and its rights, with John Wick joining Chaosium as creative director, and the line is now sold through Chaosium's store. Later books added the Crescent Empire, the New World, Ifri and the Woven Land. The system directly replaced 7th Sea First Edition (1999), although it is a new set of rules and not a revision of the original. Description Players take on heroes who uncover global conspiracies, explore the ruins of a vanished race and protect the rightful rulers of Théah from villains. The Game Master (GM) runs the story and the villains, and the game's structure, built around personal Stories, suits campaigns more than one-shots. A reviewer described it as a narrative indie game dressed up as a traditional one. The game asks a table to be comfortable with negotiating the fiction and with a GM who plans scenes in advance. The setting chapter runs to 96 pages in a hardback of about 300 pages, and players may expect more rules than the game actually uses.