Blades in the Dark is a narrative-driven tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG). Players take on the roles of a crew of criminals who perform various illegal activities (called "scores") such as heists, assassination, or smuggling. The default setting, Doskvol, is an industrial city where the sun has died and the dead come back as ghosts and vampires. Each
player character is assigned a "playbook" or
character class. Players direct their characters' actions and resolve challenges by rolling a pool of six-sided dice. In addition to their
attributes, characters have a number of other stats, including their level of stress. Stress can be increased to improve roll outcomes or negate the consequences of failed rolls. However, accumulating too much stress can lead to a character becoming traumatized, which can eventually result in the character being removed from the game. The crew also has its own playbook, which provides special abilities for all player characters. The crew playbook tracks various statistics, including the crew's wealth, reputation, and the amount of attention drawn from law enforcement. A session of
Blades in the Dark typically consists of the characters completing a score, followed by a period of downtime. Although player characters create a plan in the game's narrative, the players themselves do not prepare for a score ahead of time. Instead, the
game master places players near the beginning of a score's execution, and players can represent their characters' planning through the use of
flashbacks. After a score, characters can engage in several downtime activities, such as acquiring assets for future scores, recovering from injuries, or indulging in a vice such as drug use or gambling in order to reduce stress. ==Publication history==