Doskvol is a city of crime, top to bottom. Every faction preys on others to survive. Alliances are fleeting, vendettas are bloody. Into this chaos of corruption and violence your fledgling crew has set its course. Will you be crushed, or will you rise up?

Blades in the Dark is a 2017 roleplaying game by John Harper published by EvilHat, focused on playing a gang in the underworld of an steam-age city, running heists and building their influence.

It made a pretty big splash in the rpg scene, with a community of inspired Forged in the Dark games. In the broader scene, it expanded on previous (and continuing) interest in the Powered by the Apocalypse scene1 and popularized the Progress Clock, Flashbacks and other innovations.

Its influence - including the dice mechanic it used (starting with a dice pool of d6 dice, where the value of the highest die determines a varied degree of success) - can be seen in The Death of Arthur; some of which comes directly and some indirectly.

Footnotes

  1. Which Blades in the Dark notes as one of its influences and has some clear shared ancestry.