Blades in the Dark vs The Sprawl
Compare Blades in the Dark and The Sprawl side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Blades in the Dark | The Sprawl | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Cyberpunk, Scifi |
| Tags | Heist, Mission-Based, Faction Play, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Dark Fantasy, Collaborative, Character-Driven, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Low-Prep | Mission-Based, Espionage, Heist, Noir, Gritty, Faction Play, Playbook-Driven, Fiction-First, Player-Only Rolls, One-Shot Friendly |
| Core Mechanic | 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. | When an action matches a move's fictional trigger, roll 2d6 plus Cool, Edge, Meat, Mind, Style, or Synth. A 10+ is a strong hit, 7-9 is a weak hit, and a 6 or less lets the MC make a move. |
| Dice | d6 dice pool | 2d6 |
| Complexity | High | High |
| Availability | Free quickstart | Paid |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 4 of 5 book tools |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (SRD only) | Proprietary |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Evil Hat Productions | Ardens Ludere |
| Year | 2017 | 2016 |
| Languages | English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian | English, French |
| Best For | Groups who want a continuing criminal-crew campaign with improvised heists and consequences that change their standing among rival factions. | Groups who want structured heist-style missions with a hacking minigame and a growing web of corporate rivals across a campaign. It suits players who enjoy risky planning and personal ties that complicate the crew's loyalties. |
| Highlights | 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. | Countdown Clocks track legwork noise, mission alertness, and corporate attention on separate tracks, giving missions a visible pressure gauge instead of a single doom clock. Cyberdeck ratings and tiered ICE turn hacking into its own tactical minigame layered on the standard moves. The Legwork and Action phase structure lets intel and gear earned through investigation convert directly into narrated advantages during the mission itself. |
| Considerations | 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. | Combat and infiltration rely on fictional positioning and MC judgment as much as dice modifiers, so groups who want tightly defined tactical rules may find some outcomes settled by table discussion. Running an ongoing campaign means the MC tracks separate Countdown Clocks for every corporation, threat, and mission in play at once. Choosing how a character paid for their starting cyberware can permanently tie that character to being owned or hunted by a specific corporation. |