Core Rules

The following works were influential in the creation of this hack:

This work is based on Blades in the Dark, product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. This work is an independent production by Emyrikol’s Games and is not affiliated with One Seven Design or the Melsonian Arts Council.

Table of Contents

Character Creation

  1. Record your Stamina. It is 16.
  2. Record your Luck. It is 6.
  3. Record baseline possessions that every character starts with: 2d6 ivory pieces, a knife, 3 supply, 6 provisions.
  4. Choose or roll for a background.
  5. Choose or roll for a kind.
  6. Choose a name.

Character Advancement

When you make a roll with one of your Skills or Spells, put a mark next to it if you failed to completely avoid at least one of the consequences you were rolling against. If the Skill or Spell has already reached the maximum rating of 4, don’t put a mark next to it.

When you have a chance to take a day of downtime and reflect on your journey, you may check to see what you have learned. Choose up to 3 Skills or Spells with a mark next to them, then roll their ratings. If every die rolls a 3 or above, you may increase the rating of that Skill or Spell by 1. When you have finished rolling, remove all marks from your sheet.

When another character trains you in a Skill or Spell you don’t know, spend at least a week learning from them. At the end of that time, you can learn the Skill or Spell at rating 1. You may be able to learn certain Skills and Spells without the assistance of a teacher - either from manuals or spellbooks, or on your own. This usually takes longer.

When you come to the end of a significant adventure or complete a major quest, permanently increase your Stamina by 1.

Special Advancement

It is possible for your character to obtain new special abilities, similar to the ones that some backgrounds and kinds begin the game with. Special abilities are unique powers or capabilities that allow you to bend or break the rules of this game.

There’s no procedure for this kind of advancement. New special abilities can only be obtained by fulfilling some kind of personal quest, often unique to your character. You may need to uncover lost and forgotten magics, seek out a legendary master to teach you secret techniques, or perform some other suitably heroic endeavour.

Rolling the Dice

The core of this game is a conversation. The players describe what their characters do, and the GM tells them what happens. If you attempt something trivial or impossible, the GM will simply describe the outcome. If there is an unavoidable cost that must be paid or a consequence that must be suffered, the GM will tell you what the price is.

When you face an avoidable consequence from a dangerous opponent or a challenging situation, the GM will describe the potential consequences (“if you attack, you might get hurt”). They will also tell you about the effectiveness or impact of your approach (“either way, you’ll inflict your weapon’s damage”). Then you roll the dice to see if you can avoid the consequences.

The “avoidable consequence” you’re rolling to avoid might be the threat of failure, if you’re attempting something particularly difficult or uncertain. It might be some straightforward unpleasantness, like suffering a physical injury or getting caught. It might be a complication, like alerting the guards or accidentally starting a fire. Often, there will be multiple consequences that you’re rolling to avoid at once.

1. Choose a Skill or Push your Luck. If you have a Skill that is relevant to your approach, start with dice equal to your rating in it. For example, if you have Sword Fighting 3 then you would start with 3d. If you have no relevant Skills, then you start with 0d. Alternatively, you may Push your Luck instead.

2. Add dice for additional threats. If there’s more than one threat or consequence you’re rolling to avoid, add 1d for each additional threat. Feel free to suggest additional consequences to the GM for more dice! More consequences means more danger, but the extra dice mean you’re more likely to avoid any single threat.

3. Add bonus dice. You can get +1d if an ally assists you with a setup action, if some other advantage sets you up for success, or if you’re using masterwork gear.

4. Roll the dice. If you have still have 0d, you must roll a single die at desperate position. Assign a die result to each consequence you’re facing.

Judge the results as follows:

Resisting Consequences. If you wish, you can spend Luck to resist consequences. Each point of Luck you spend allows you to resist a single consequence. Usually, resisting means that the impact of the consequence is reduced by one step (i.e. from standard to limited). If it makes more sense, the GM also has the option to rule that your character completely avoids the consequence.

Critical Success. If you have any left over 6s at the end of the roll, you can spend them to increase the effectiveness of your action, to set up an ally, or for some other benefit or useful outcome agreed with the GM.

Risk and Effect Levels

Most the time, the GM can simply describe the potential consequences and impact of your actions in terms of the fiction. Sometimes, though, it’s helpful to have a more concrete way to talk about them.

Both consequences and effects are categorised into four levels: limited, standard, great and extreme. If you are closely matched with an opponent or obstacle, then standard is the default for both. In most cases, you can take a bigger risk to achieve a greater effect - for example, by going all-in and fighting recklessly.

When opponents aren’t closely matched, the more dangerous one gets more impact for less risk. This might be the case, for example, if your Skill is outmatched by an enemy’s Tier. The same applies if your lockpicking skills and tools are outmatched by an especially fancy lock - to reflect that disadvantage, you might suffer a greater risk or reduced effect.

Controlled Position

If you are in control and there’s no impending danger, there’s no need to make a roll. The GM simply describes what your character is able to accomplish without taking a risk or paying a cost.

Desperate Position

If you are outnumbered, outclassed, or attempting something very difficult, you might need to make a desperate roll to avoid the threat. A desperate roll is all-or-nothing: a 6 is a success, but a 5 or less means you suffer the full brunt of the consequences.

You can use desperate rolls to represent something like shooting a monster’s eye. It’s challenging and hard to pull off, but representing that difficulty in terms of increased risk or reduced effect doesn’t really make sense.

Setup Actions

A setup action is an ordinary roll where the intent is to assist another player. For example, you might create a distraction or protect the archer while they line up a shot. Assuming your roll is successful, choose one:

As usual, you only have to roll if there’s an avoidable consequence. If you can set up an ally without taking a risk, or simply by paying some cost, then you don’t have to roll.

Group Actions

When your characters work together to overcome some obstacle as a team, everyone rolls individually to see how their part of the consequences manifest. If you’re all trying to lift a gate together, for example, each member of the party would roll separately to see if they become tired from their exertions.

The benefit of a group action manifests in terms of risk and effect. When you combine your efforts, you’ll often have less risk or greater effect than you would have if you were tackling the problem individually. The same applies for NPCs joining a group action. They don’t roll, but their participation factors into your fictional positioning and informs the potential consequences.

More isn’t always better, though. If you’re trying to sneak through an enemy encampment, for example, a smaller group will be easier to conceal. Adding more people won’t make the task any easier - it might even increase the risk or introduce new consequences!

Pushing your Luck

Instead of using one of your Skills to make a roll, you can choose to Push your Luck instead. You can do so in any situation where it makes sense for a stroke of good luck to substitute for skill. You can’t usually Push your Luck to do something skilful over a long period of time, such as navigating the ocean.

When you Push your Luck, you simply use your current Luck as the dice pool. After you make the roll, reduce your current Luck by 1. If your current Luck drops to 0, you can’t Push your Luck anymore until it recovers.

The Spotlight

This game doesn’t have rules for deciding who goes first. Instead, the spotlight shifts around from character to character. It flows with the conversation, always following the fiction.

It’s the GM’s job to manage the spotlight, shifting the focus around so that everyone (including non-player characters) gets a chance to do something interesting. As a player, you can also help out by handing the spotlight over to someone who hasn’t had a chance to contribute yet.

When the spotlight is on a player character, we’re asking them what they do. They’re the ones taking the initiative and propelling the fiction forward. Whether or not their action involves a roll, what happens next is in their hands.

When the spotlight is on something that threatens the player characters, like an enemy or a hazard, we’re asking how the player characters react. The GM tells the players what’s about to happen, and it’s up to them to decide how to respond.

Shifting the spotlight more aggressively is a great way to represent a more formidable threat. An enemy that seizes the initiative from the player characters, behaves unpredictably, and forces the players to react to its actions is going to be a lot more dynamic and challenging to deal with than a more passive threat.

Combat & Harm

Combat in this game works like any other action. When you engage an enemy in melee combat you will usually inflict your damage automatically, unless there’s a significant threat of failing to hurt the enemy at all. The main consequence that you’re rolling to avoid is whether they hurt you back.

Ranged combat is the same. If it’s a tricky shot, you might be rolling to see whether you miss. If you’re firing into combat, you might be rolling to avoid hitting one of your allies by accident. If it’s an easy shot, though, you inflict damage automatically.

Damage

After successfully harming someone, roll a d6 and consult the damage table for your weapon to see how much Stamina they lose. All modifiers to damage will, unless otherwise specified, modify the damage roll and not the actual damage inflicted. The damage roll can never be reduced below 1.

The damage roll is most commonly modified by the risk or effect of the action that caused it:

Dual Wielding. If you wield a weapon in each hand, roll the damage die for both of them and pick whichever result you prefer. If you’re wielding two different weapons, the larger weapon usually determines what Skill you roll to fight with them.

Armour

There are four levels of protection that armour can grant. They are vaguely defined so that whatever assortment of protective equipment you’ve managed to cobble together can be assigned to an armour level. Armour works as a modifier to damage rolls whenever it makes sense for it to protect you from harm.

A target is considered to be Unarmoured (+1), Lightly Armoured (0), Modestly Armoured (-1), or Heavily Armoured (-2). Carrying a shield also reduces damage rolls by 1, on top of whatever armour you’re wearing.

Conditions

When something happens to weaken or impair you without inflicting damage, you suffer a condition. For example, you might complete a perilous climb but become Exhausted in the process. Or the bite of a venomous creature might leave you Poisoned. It might even be something more abstract, like a scathing insult that leaves you Humiliated.

In a situation where you’d reasonably expect a condition to hinder you, the GM may invoke it to do one of the following:

Conditions go away on their own after a little while, as soon as it makes sense in the fiction. If you’re exhausted, then resting will clear it. If you’re poisoned, then time or an antidote will be enough to cure you. If you’re humiliated, a strong drink or a good night’s sleep might help.

Serious Conditions. You can also use conditions to represent lingering wounds or deep traumas that hinder you more than simply losing Stamina would. A close brush with death might leave you Haunted, for example, or a devastating blow from a powerful monster might leave you with Broken Ribs. Clearing such conditions often requires an extended period of rest, the attentions of an expert healer, or powerful magic.

Healing

If you take a long rest of 8 hours or so and consume 1 provision, you regain 1d6 Stamina and 1 Luck. If you indulge yourself and consume 2 provisions, you regain 2d6 Stamina and 1d6 Luck.

A skilled healer can attempt to adminster first aid to an injured character; only one attempt can be made per injury. This restores 1d6 Stamina, at the risk of using up their healing supplies. If they don’t have the right equipment, they roll at the risk of making the injury worse. Various healing magic is also available in the form of potions and spells that can restore Stamina.

Death

If you fall to 0 Stamina, you are dying. You have about a minute, or enough time for your friends to make one attempt to heal you, before death comes for you. A successful attempt at first aid restores you to 1 Stamina.

When death comes for you, Push your Luck. On a 6, you are merely incapacitated, or saved by some bizarre twist of fate. On a 4-5, you’re left with a serious condition that serves as a debilitating reminder of your brush with death. On a 1-3, you die. If you are unable or unwilling to Push your Luck, you simply die.

Magic

Spells work like Skills. Every spell you know covers a category of magic, such as “Spells of Influence” or “Spells of Frost”. Check the glossary of spells for a more detailed description of the kinds of magic they cover, along with some example spells for each discipline.

Spells also have a Stamina cost, which must be paid to cast them whether or not the spell succeeds. The exact cost depends on the magnitude of magic you’re trying to work:

Magic is delicate and prone to failure when rushed. If you’re casting a spell in a Controlled Position, with plenty of time and no imminent threats, then you don’t have to make a roll. Otherwise, there’s always the risk that the spell fails, or misses the target, or is resisted by the target.

Spells are the work of a moment, but even the most taxing spells are limited in scope and duration. For more ambitious and powerful magical workings, you’ll need to turn to ritual magic.

Equipment

When adventurers prepare themselves for their next expedition, they may buy Supply for 1 ivory apiece. This might be something like a 10 foot pole, a coil of rope, a torch, a flask of oil, or even a spare quiver of ammunition. You don’t have to decide what it is when you buy it.

At any point during your adventure, you can expend a unit of Supply to produce a specific item of some kind. It can be anything you would expect a well-prepared adventurer to pack, but it can’t be anything rare and specialised - like a grappling hook or a healer’s kit. It also can’t be anything that costs more than 1 ivory piece.

Encumbrance

You may carry twelve things without issue. Some items are of inconsequential individual weight, like arrows, and will only ever take up one slot unless you have an awful lot of them. Provisions are 6 to a slot, supply is 1 to a slot. For everything else, what constitutes a lot is up to your group to decide.

Large items are anything you need both hands to hold. They take up two slots in your inventory. Armour takes a number of slots equal to its protective value - 1 slot for light armour, 2 slots for modest armour, 3 slots for heavy armour.

If you find yourself carrying more than 12 items, you gain the Encumbered condition due to the inconvenient weight. The GM may invoke it whenever the weight of your equipment might hamper you.

Masterwork Gear

Masterwork equipment is rarer and more expensive than regular gear, but also more reliable and effective. Its exceptional qualities can provide assistance when they apply to an action, similar to a Setup Action.

When you get a piece of masterwork gear, make a note of what makes it special. A bow might be accurate at great distances, for example, or a shield might be resistant to fire. If the unique qualities of your masterwork equipment apply to a roll, you get +1d to that roll.

This bonus stacks with other sources of bonus dice, but you can only receive it from one piece of gear per roll. If you have multiple masterwork items that apply to a single roll, they don’t stack.

The Dice of Fate

When the GM isn’t sure how some situation should proceed, they can use the Dice of Fate to disclaim decision making and determine how things unfold. Turn to the Dice of Fate when you’re unsure of what should happen next and want to leave it up to the dice.

The Dice of Fate might be rolled to establish the weather, indicate a random NPC’s mood or attitude, or to determine the initial position when the player characters stumble across some uncertain situation.

If some Skill or Tier rating is applicable, you can use that as a starting point for how many dice to roll. Otherwise, start from 1d for sheer dumb luck. Add 1d for every major advantage that applies, and subtract 1d for every major disadvantage.

Judge the results as follows:

The Event Roll

The Event Roll is a special use for the Dice of Fate which the GM can use to represent the passage of time, abstracting away the need for strict timekeeping or meticulous resource management. When the player characters are in a dangerous or uncertain area, the GM will make an Event Roll every so often. Once every hour or two is usually a good interval for a dungeon. For wilderness exploration over a longer period, every four hours may be more appropriate.

As usual, start with 1d for sheer dumb luck. Add 1d for each major advantage that makes exploration more expedient or safe, such as effective precautions or a useful spell. Subtract 1d for each major disadvantage that makes exploration more awkward or risky, such as encumbrance or poor visibility.

Judge the results as follows:

Here’s a generic event list you can use. When they’re all crossed out, reset the list and start again.

You can make your own event lists for specific dungeons or locales, if you want something less vague. Feel free to break up the categories into more specific events; for example, you could split locality up into “the weather changes” and “the wretched smoke boils up from the sewers”.

Progress Clocks

When an obstacle can’t be resolved by a single roll, you can use a progress clock - a circle divided up into segments - to track ongoing effort or the approach of impending trouble. The more complex the problem, the more segments in the clock.

As a general rule of thumb, each level of risk or effect is equivalent to one “tick” of the clock. Clocks should always reflect the fiction, though, not the other way around. Don’t be afraid to throw a half-filled clock away if the players come up with a clever plan to overcome an obstacle in one fell swoop.

An illustration of three progress clocks.

You can also use progress clocks to represent long-term goals and projects that the player characters might wish to undertake, or to track ongoing background events and the passage of time. For example, you might use a clock to count down to the next Event Roll.

Enemies

The enemies that characters will encounter are not like them. As described in The Spotlight, the GM doesn’t roll attacks for enemies. Only the players generally roll the dice. When the spotlight is on your opponent, it just means that you’ll be rolling to avoid their attacks or react to their actions, rather than taking the initiative yourself.

For that reason, enemies only have four stats: Tier, Stamina, Armour and Damage.

Tier is a way to summarise the overall threat level of an enemy: how formidable, dangerous or skilled they are (especially in their element or area of expertise). It’s comparable to a player character’s Skill rating. If you have Sword Fighting 2 and you’re fighting with a Tier 2 swordfighter, for example, you’re probably evenly matched. Although the GM will rarely roll an enemy’s Tier directly, they can use it as a rough guide when setting the stakes of a roll.

You can use the following list as a guideline when determining the Tier of an enemy or obstacle:

Stamina, Armour and Damage work exactly the same for enemies as they do for players.

Enemies generally have a bit less Stamina than player characters to avoid dragging combat out, and to reflect the fact that they’re not imbued with the same measure of destiny as our adventurers.

Multiple Enemies

When running a group of enemies, you don’t need to handle each opponent separately. Instead, you can treat the group itself as a single threat whose scale makes it more dangerous. You can represent their increased numbers by increasing the effective Tier of the enemy, by introducing multiple consequences that must be rolled against, or by applying some unavoidable cost.

For example, let’s say we have a skilled warrior (Sword Fighting 2) fighting against some generic guards (Tier 1):

As usual, make your ruling based on the fiction and the tone you want for your game. Maybe you want to run a game where a single warrior can fend off a dozen guards at once? In that case, you might prefer to treat their attacks as two separate consequences. With double sixes, the warrior could come out of the clash unscathed.

Or maybe they’re not guards, but squabbling lowlives that trip over each other and are more interested in saving their own skins than scoring a blow? Their numbers might not give them any advantage at all! The only difference between a single foe and many is that the latter will take more time (and more rolls) to defeat or drive off.

Example Enemy

Silver Mimic

Tier 1
Stamina 10
Unarmoured (+1)
Damage as Weapon

An alchemical slurry that can imitate living shapes when threatened. They are clumsy and mindless, with silver eyes and jerky movements. They cannot speak, and only moan gutturally as they stumble at you with weapons that are plenty dangerous despite being fake.

Special: When weakened to half Stamina, the mimic collapses back into a pool of silver sludge. They cannot attack in this form and can only ooze slowly over the ground, but are difficult to harm - becoming Heavily Armoured (-2) against most ordinary attacks. Things like fire, frost and acid hurt them normally. They seek to merge with another injured mimic, allowing them to reform at full strength.