Forged in the Dark is the most influential indie RPG engine of the last decade. If you played Blades in the Dark and want more — or you’ve heard FitD mentioned in a podcast and want a way in — this is the article I wish existed when I started.
I’m the designer of Omega Project: Infamy, a FitD game I built during COVID. I’ve been inside this engine, taken it apart, and reassembled it for a dystopian setting. I’ll mention OPI once below — it’s a real FitD game and skipping it would be dishonest — but the rest of this list is other people’s work, and most of it is better than mine.
This is not a SEO-bait list of 47 games. It’s ten games I’d hand to a friend depending on what they actually want at the table.
What “Forged in the Dark” Actually Means
Forged in the Dark is a permissive license written by John Harper (designer of Blades in the Dark) that lets other designers build games on top of Blades’ engine. There’s an official directory that lists everything formally licensed under it.
What ties all FitD games together is a small set of mechanical bones:
- ▸ Position and Effect — the GM frames every action by how dangerous it is (controlled, risky, desperate) and how much it accomplishes (limited, standard, great). The fiction sets the dice, not the other way around.
- ▸ Clocks — progress bars for everything that isn’t a single roll. Heat, danger, projects, faction war. When a clock fills, something happens.
- ▸ Stress and Trauma — your character can push past hard limits at a personal cost. Eventually that cost permanently marks them.
- ▸ Downtime, Vice, and Faction — between scores, you heal, you indulge, you negotiate. The world has factions that act on their own.
If you’ve never played a FitD game, the entry experience is roughly: less crunch than D&D, more structure than PbtA, and the most table-energy you’ll get out of a heist or crew-based campaign in any modern RPG. The engine is unusually good at producing complications that feel earned.
Start Here: Blades in the Dark
Blades in the Dark
The original. A scoundrel crew works the haunted, industrial city of Doskvol — pulling heists, building a reputation, dodging the Bluecoats, surviving the ghosts. Everything in this lineage started here. If you’ve never touched a FitD game, this is the one.
▸ Feels like: Peaky Blinders meets Dishonored. Heists. Faction politics. Survival.
Evil Hat →I’ll be direct: Blades is still the best entry point. The rulebook is the cleanest expression of the engine. Every other FitD game on this list assumes you’ve either read Blades or you’re willing to learn its DNA from scratch in their book. Many succeed at the latter; reading Blades makes any of them easier.
The Canonical Hacks
These are the first wave of officially-licensed FitD games. They’re the proof that the engine could carry weight outside Doskvol.
Scum and Villainy
A small ragtag crew on a ship in a hostile galaxy, running jobs, dodging the Hegemony, paying off the loans on the ship. The space-opera answer to Blades. If you wanted Firefly the RPG, this is genuinely it.
▸ Feels like: Firefly. Cowboy Bebop. The first season of Andor.
Off Guard Games →Band of Blades
Persistent dark-fantasy military campaign. You don’t play a single hero — you play an entire Legion retreating across a continent, losing soldiers, holding lines, watching morale tick down clock by clock. Bleakest tone in the FitD library, and the most strategic by a wide margin.
▸ Feels like: Black Company. Glen Cook. A military campaign you can’t win, only survive.
Off Guard Games →Genre-Bending FitD
This is where the engine started doing things Blades couldn’t. These games prove FitD isn’t locked into the heist crew shape — it can be war, monsters, post-collapse hope, anti-fascist resistance.
Brinkwood: The Blood of Tyrants
A masked anti-fascist heist game in a world where the rich are literal vampires. The crew puts on living folk-magic masks and steals from the bloodsucking elite. The most politically pointed FitD game made, and one of the most stylish.
▸ Feels like: Robin Hood with teeth. The Mask, but Marxist.
Far Horizons Co-op →Beam Saber
Mecha pilots inside a war that won’t end. Your squad fights, the war continues, your machines pile up trauma alongside you. Replaces Blades’ crew with a Squad and a War, and the structural answer is brutal.
▸ Feels like: Gundam. Patlabor. The good parts of Pacific Rim — but as a war you can’t stop.
Beam Saber on Itch →Songs for the Dusk
Post-apocalyptic solarpunk. The world ended; the survivors are rebuilding. Your crew is a community on the road, repairing rather than scoring. The first FitD game that argues hope is a mechanic.
▸ Feels like: Nausicaä. The Last of Us if it grew flowers. Solarpunk with FitD bones.
Wicked Ones
You play the monsters in the dungeon. Your crew is a goblin warband, a vampire coven, a dragon cult — building your lair, raiding the surface, fighting off the adventurers who keep showing up. Inverts Blades’ relationship to authority and runs with it.
▸ Feels like: The Hobbit from Smaug’s POV. Dungeon Keeper. Adventure Time’s evil-but-fun energy.
Wicked Ones on DriveThruRPG →The Current Wave (2023–2026)
FitD didn’t stop in 2020. These are the games that are landing now, including one I’m responsible for.
Slugblaster
Kids on skateboards through interdimensional skate spots. Less crime, more becoming. A FitD descendant where the ‘scores’ are tricks, sessions are after-school hangouts, and the central question is what kind of teenager you’re going to be. Genuinely one of the best indie RPGs of the last few years.
▸ Feels like: Stranger Things meets Tony Hawk meets Lady Bird.
Slugblaster site →Court of Blades
Renaissance Italian noble intrigue. Your crew is a noble House navigating courts, marriages, assassinations, and church politics. Swaps the working-class scoundrel framing for high-stakes aristocratic maneuvering.
▸ Feels like: The Borgias. A Song of Ice and Fire’s court chapters. Assassin’s Creed II if you wrote down what happened.
Galactic 2e
A small rebellion of misfits in a galaxy ruled by an Empire. Lighter and faster than Scum and Villainy, with a sharper focus on the band of weirdos versus the totalitarian state. Perfect for a short campaign or a one-shot.
▸ Feels like: Star Wars from the Rebels-era. Andor, condensed.
Omega Project: Infamy
My own game, mentioned here once because skipping it would be dishonest. FitD in a surveillance-state dystopia called Amerius — 9 districts, 16 factions, a public-credit system called S3 that tracks every operative on a ledger. Ships as a travel-size Hooligan Kit, $44.95, standalone. The pitch: Blades in the Dark, but the Empire is watching.
▸ Feels like: Person of Interest meets The Wire. 1984 with dice.
The Vault →How to Pick the Right FitD for Your Table
“Which one should I play?” gets a different answer depending on what your group actually wants. Honest decision tree:
▸ You’ve never played FitD → Blades in the Dark. Don’t skip it. The clarity of the original rulebook saves you hours of learning curve later.
▸ You want space crews → Scum and Villainy. It’s the only honest answer.
▸ You want a long, bleak campaign → Band of Blades. Most demanding FitD to GM, most rewarding payoff.
▸ You want a political game → Brinkwood for anti-fascist heists, Omega Project: Infamy for surveillance-state pressure, Court of Blades for aristocratic maneuvering.
▸ You want a short, lighter game → Galactic 2e or Slugblaster. Both will run a complete arc in 6–10 sessions.
▸ You want to invert the genre → Wicked Ones (play the monsters), Songs for the Dusk (play the rebuilders).
▸ You want mecha → Beam Saber. It is, in fact, the answer.
Where to Go Next
This is ten games. There are dozens more — many of them shipped as one-page, $5 itch.io zines that are honestly some of the best designs in the lineage. Two places to dig further:
- ▸ The official Forged in the Dark directory — every formally licensed game in one place.
- ▸ Itch.io’s Forged in the Dark tag — where the experimental and the brilliant tend to land first.
If you want my take on what an actually-good FitD game can do with the dystopian-political angle, the Hooligan Kit for Omega Project: Infamy is on Amazon. The design influences page lays out what I stole from whom. The operative quiz is a two-minute way to see what your character would look like.
The rest of the engine is in good hands. Go play something.