Tabletop Roleplaying Games

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.