Band of Blades vs Inevitable
Compare Band of Blades and Inevitable side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Band of Blades | Inevitable | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Horror | Fantasy |
| Tags | Fiction-First, Playbook-Driven, Grimdark, Mission-Based, Faction Play, Deadly, Survival | Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Deadly, Fiction-First, Grimdark, Lore-Heavy, Mission-Based, Narrative, Rules-Light |
| 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. | Build a dice pool of d6s from Reputations, equipment, and risk-taking. Roll and take the highest: 1–3 fails with a Consequence, 4–5 succeeds but with a Consequence and earns a Showdown Token, 6 succeeds cleanly. In climactic Showdowns, one character faces the Threat alone: roll d6 plus bonuses from negotiated Costs against a target equal to Threat minus accumulated Showdown Tokens. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | Low |
| Availability | Paid | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 3 of 5 book tools |
| License | Forged in the Dark | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Not yet researched |
| Publisher | Evil Hat Productions / Off Guard Games | SoulMuppet Publishing |
| Year | 2019 | 2024 |
| Languages | English, French, Spanish, Italian | English |
| 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 narrative, play-to-lose fantasy RPG where doomed cowboy knights sacrifice everything to defy prophecy in a richly detailed kingdom on the brink of destruction. |
| 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. | Play-to-lose structure makes failure and sacrifice mechanically meaningful rather than punishing. Six classes (Errant, Mystic, Godsman, Taleweaver, Roamer, Shadowjack) each with unique abilities and Reputation suggestions. Nested quest structure (World Quests, Stepwise Quests, Doom Quests, and the Fall Quest) creates escalating campaign arcs. Showdown mechanic focuses climactic confrontations on a single character negotiating personal Costs against the Threat. |
| 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. | Tightly bound to the Kingdom of Myth setting with no toolkit for other campaigns. Play-to-lose premise requires buy-in from all players. GM must manage interconnected Doom timelines and escalating Threat levels across multiple quest types. No tactical combat system: conflicts resolve through the same Challenge and Showdown mechanics as everything else. |