# Forged in the Dark *Created:* 2026-10-09, *Modified:* 2026-10-09 ![[Blades in the Dark (cover).jpg|600]] **Forged in the Dark** is the engine John Harper built for **[[Blades in the Dark]]** and then pried loose and let eat the hobby — the rare rules chassis that shows up to the table already dressed for the job. Most systems hand you a tool kit and a shrug; FitD arrives with a crew, a turf war, and a score that keeps coming due, so the mechanics themselves are the plot. It's **[[Powered by the Apocalypse]]**'s sullen teenage branch — Harper cites **[[Apocalypse World]]** in his own credits — but it ditched the move list and the friendly Master of Ceremonies for its own brand of swagger: d6 pools, position and effect, and clocks that tick louder the closer you get to the trouble. ## The System FitD was carved out of **Blades in the Dark** into its own freely-licensed SRD, which is how it spread the way PbtA did before it: take the bones, skip the paperwork. What the engine actually believes in is a loop, not a genre. You are scoundrels with an organization; every job is a **score** that pays off and heats up the city, so the next one bites harder. The real drama lives in the gap between the score's flash and the **downtime** grind — licking wounds, chasing vices, chipping away at long-term projects, and paying the faction game its protection money. There's no "generic" FitD, and it knows it: the engine is deliberately narrow, so each game just bolts a new setting and a fresh stack of playbooks onto the same criminal-enterprise skeleton. ## Mechanics The centerpiece is the **action roll**, and it's the flattest, fairest gamble in the hobby once you stop fighting it. When you try something dangerous, roll a pool of d6 equal to your action rating and keep the highest die: a **6** is clean success, a **4/5** is success with a bill attached, a **1–3** is failure with interest, and a matching pair of sixes is a **critical** that bumps your effect up a notch. Before the dice even fall, you and the GM bargain over **position** — how deep in the fire you are (controlled, risky, desperate) — and **effect** — how much of the goal you can actually bank (limited, standard, great). It's the hobby's most elegant way of making you *choose* your perils before you roll for the privilege of surviving them. The **stress** economy is what makes you feel like a scoundrel instead of a spreadsheet. You can **push yourself** for +1d or better effect at 2 stress a pop, lean on a teammate for **assistance**, or take a **Devil's Bargain** to feed the dice while handing the GM a fresh disaster. Hate the consequence that just landed? **Resist** it — roll an attribute, pay stress for how badly you roll, and rewrite the outcome; resistance always works, the bill just varies. Empty the last stress box and you take a **trauma**, a permanent scar that turns into experience bait; four of those and your scoundrel's run is over. Harm walks its own ladder of hurt, from a bruise up through "better write a new character." Around that engine spins the campaign clockwork. **Progress clocks** put a visible countdown on everything, from the heist's alarms to a rival faction's long con — fill one and something gives. **Load** caps your gear; **flashbacks** let you reveal you were cleverer than you remembered; **downtime** is a recovery-and-investment menu; and the **faction game** — turf, tier, claims — is **Blades'** particular gift, a city of rivals with agendas of their own and your crew's standing caught in the middle. Characters are **playbooks** (an archetype and a grid of twelve actions across Insight, Prowess, and Resolve), the crew a **crew type**, and experience feeds both — which is the engine's way of making sure a season of scoundrels ends up looking like a different band of scoundrels than it started with. ## The Family Sorted by first publication; a wiki-link means the game has its own note. Bold marks games held in the user's library. - **[[Blades in the Dark]]** (2017) — John Harper's origin: scoundrels in the haunted, lightning-ringed city of Doskvol. *In the library.* - **[[Scum and Villainy]]** (2017) — space scoundrels on a barely-spaceworthy ship (Off Guard / Evil Hat). *In the library.* - **[[Band of Blades]]** (2019) — the Legion's desperate retreat under the Cinder King (Off Guard / Evil Hat). *In the library.* - **[[CBR+PNK]]** (2020) — Emanuele Galletto's ultraviolent cyberpunk one-shot, in and out before the heat arrives (Mythopoeia). *In the library.* - **[[Blades in the Dark - Deep Cuts|Blades in the Dark: Deep Cuts]]** (2025) — John Harper's expansion — 27 new factions, 100+ heritage packages, and alternate mechanics for people who think Blades is too soft. *In the library.* - **[[Blades '68]]** (2026) — Tim Denee's swinging-sixties jump forward (Old Dog Games / Evil Hat). *In the library.* Free hacks and fan material in the library (undated releases, each running the same score/downtime loop through a different filter): **[[Runners in the Shadows]]** (Mark Cleveland's "Blade Runner meets Ocean's Eleven," ghosts and ninjas included), **[[Bump in the Dark]]** (Jex J. Thomas's monster-hunting teens), **[[Subway Runners]]** (Dan Phipps's gig-economy metro-worker micro-game), and **[[Blades Under Tyr]]** (fan rules putting the engine in the Dark Sun city of Tyr). ## References - [Forged in the Dark games — bladesinthedark.com](https://bladesinthedark.com/forged-dark) - [Blades in the Dark SRD / The Basics — bladesinthedark.com](https://bladesinthedark.com/basics) - [Forged in the Dark — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forged_in_the_Dark) - [Evil Hat — Forged in the Dark product line](https://evilhat.com/product-category/rpgs/forged-in-the-dark/)