Band of Blades
Core BookCore 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.
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.
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.
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.