City of Blades

Maria the Hunter stalked her prey through The City’s maze of back alleys. She didn’t know who this man was, not really; but she had a face, a name, and assurance of payment upon his death. That was enough. He picked up the pace, perhaps realising he was being pursued, and Maria followed in kind, staying close enough to track every twist and turn. As she rounded the next corner, suddenly his knife was drawn and in her belly. It took a great effort to twist her body aside in the nick of time, taking just a scratch as the man sprinted away. Maria would pay for that stress in time, but for now it was on her to keep up the pursuit.

Lucian the Connected, Maria’s partner, watched from the rooftops, tracking every twist and turn. He had been planning for this man to flee at this moment, down this specific street, right where he had arranged for the scaffolding to be built across the entire alley, blocking the man’s escape route. Just in time for Maria to close in on her prey.

What is City of Blades?

City of Blades is a tabletop roleplaying game about a gang of desperate scoundrels engaging in daring heists, wily cons, and cunning assassinations. It is based on John Harper's Blades in the Dark, but stripped down to the core rules for playing an individual score, or short campaign. The game uses a single unified six-sided-dice pool system, focusing on fictional positioning and a character’s core competencies affecting the roll. Characters have three basic stats, and a handful of simple abilities and equipment, and character creation takes 5-10 minutes, meaning play can start almost as soon as you sit down.

Why make this game?

Blades in the Dark is one of my favourite TTRPGs, but I realised that by far most of the sessions I ran and played were one-shots. A lot of the mechanics of Blades in the Dark are focused on campaign-level play and progression, so I didn’t use many of them in my games. I thought I’d remove these rules and directly write up a version of the rules to use in one-shots. From there, I rewrote the playbooks to be basic archetypes, and stripped away many of the other mechanics to make character creation and play much more streamlined.

How do I use this game?

This game necessitates a level of narrative control in the hands of the players, but overall it can be used in three ways. The GM can prepare a situation for the players to engage with, leaving the players to discover the world during play. The GM and players can work together at the start of and throughout the session to create a world and a situation, and develop the drama through a conversation around the action. Or, City of Blades can be used to run prewritten adventure modules, with minimal adaptation. If preparing an adventure or using a prewritten module, City of Blades benefits from an urban setting, or another setting with a densely packed environment, busy crowds, and ample architectural space.

Why is it four pages?

When I run lightweight/short-form games, I like to print out the games onto paper for quick and easy reference. Keeping City of Blades at four pages allows the game to be printed onto a single A4 page, and folded booklet-style for a complete game.