Band of Blades vs Blades in the Dark

Compare Band of Blades and Blades in the Dark side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Band of Blades	Blades in the Dark
Genre	Fantasy, Horror	Fantasy
Tags	Fiction-First, Playbook-Driven, Grimdark, Mission-Based, Faction Play, Deadly, Survival	Heist, Mission-Based, Faction Play, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Dark Fantasy, Collaborative, Character-Driven, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Low-Prep
Core Mechanic	Forged in the Dark: roll a d6 dice pool equal to your action rating and read the highest die: 6 is a full success, 4–5 is a partial success with consequences, 1–3 is a bad outcome. Position (controlled, risky, desperate) sets the stakes, and players spend stress to resist consequences. Play alternates between a mission phase (specialists and rank-and-file Legionnaires execute one primary and one secondary mission) and a campaign phase, where each player runs a permanent Legion Role (Commander, Marshal, Quartermaster, Spymaster, or Lorekeeper) making strategic decisions about routes, supply, intel, and personnel as the army retreats toward Skydagger Keep.	Roll d6s equal to an action rating and keep the highest result. A 1–3 produces a bad outcome, 4–5 succeeds with consequences, and 6 succeeds fully. Multiple 6s produce a critical success. Before an action roll, the GM sets its position and effect to establish the danger and intended impact. Players can add a die by pushing with stress or accepting a Devil's Bargain.
Dice	d6 dice pool	d6 dice pool
Complexity	High	High
Availability	Paid	Free quickstart
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	5 of 5 book tools
License	Forged in the Dark	Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (SRD only)
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Commercial publishing allowed — Open license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Evil Hat Productions / Off Guard Games	Evil Hat Productions
Year	2019	2017
Languages	English, French, Spanish, Italian	English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian
Best For	Groups who want a campaign-length military fantasy where the Legion as a whole is the protagonist: character death is expected, players cycle through different soldiers each mission, and strategic decisions about routes, supply, and intel are split across the table rather than held by the GM.	Groups who want a continuing criminal-crew campaign with improvised heists and consequences that change their standing among rival factions.
Highlights	Players rotate through Specialist, Soldier, and Rookie playbooks across missions rather than playing fixed characters, so attrition lands without ending personal arcs: the Legion endures even when individual soldiers fall. Each player also holds a permanent Legion Role that drives the campaign phase, splitting army-management decisions across the table instead of leaving them with the GM. Time and Pressure clocks turn the campaign into a race against the Cinder King: advancing toward Skydagger Keep burns time, but lingering builds undead pressure that escalates the difficulty and lethality of future missions.	Flashbacks establish earlier preparation during a heist, allowing the group to enter the action without planning every contingency. Resistance lets players reduce or avoid consequences at a potential stress cost. Crew advancement changes the group's influence and resources alongside its relationships with rival factions.
Considerations	The campaign phase (mission generation, spy deployments, supply, advance roll, Lorekeeper annals) takes substantial time between missions and only works if every player engages with their Role. Building a deep personal arc for a single Legionnaire is structurally difficult because characters rotate between missions: emotional investment lives with the Legion rather than any one soldier. The campaign is built around a single fixed arc ending at Skydagger Keep, with a defined map, locations, and Chosen/Broken roster. There is no open-ended sandbox mode, and a full campaign runs 12–20 sessions.	Action outcomes depend on table judgments about fictional risk and effect rather than fixed difficulty numbers. Recovering harm and clearing stress compete with personal projects for limited downtime activities. Filling the trauma track normally forces a scoundrel into retirement or prison.