With finishing one campaign, our table was open for a new game. Interest was voiced in Scum & Villainy, a Forged in the Dark game using mechanics from Blades in the Dark with a few notable differences that I’m uncovering as we’re playing it.

Due to illness, we started off things online via Roll20 and I took advantage of the GMs Day special on the set up. It’s got most of the information you will need but as per Blades in the Dark, you get a few starting scenarios but it’s on the GM to add flesh to the bones for an adventure. Week 1 we started off with characters & playbooks, week 2 we filled in details on the Ship, just to avoid overwhelming the players. As well as this is a really new game to all of us, we’ve included a “no harm, no foul” option to respec or change playbook choices for the characters after a few games just in case things aren’t playing out as they thought they would. There’s no point in bringing a new game to the table and then punishing players for choices made before they understood the system and game world.

The inspirations for this game show through clearly, drawing from Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Star Wars, and Dune to name a few. I know that I’m drawing from a few of these to fill in the blanks in the setting. To no surprise, there are already homebrew hacks out there to convert Scum & Villainy into a Star Wars setting. As is, there’s a fair chunk of background information on things like factions and worlds, but plenty of room for details to be filled in by you and your table.

Default Setting – The Procyon Sector

Ancient Precursor technology has unlocked Star-gates connect star systems and other advanced technology like star drives and AI robots as well as artifacts that have become warped or twisted with age. These Precursor artifacts are but one of the plot hooks being sought after being different feuding factions as well as the PCs. Some Precursor artifacts connect to the Way, a mysterious force with many interpretations (it’s up to the GM and players to define how the Way works at their table, but there’s a section in the core book that has plenty of suggestions).

The Ship & Crew

The players are the crew of a starship, the starship choice defining elements of the crew and the starship itself earns experience points to improve it and the crew. There are three base ships to choose from, each with a set of things that they are good at and earn experience by doing those things. The Star Dancer is basically Serenity from Firefly, well suited for smuggling and transporting (and even has a special ability called Home Cooking). The Cerberus is set up for bounty hunters and mercenaries, and the Firedrake is all about being galactic rebels fighting against the Hegemonic Alliance that dominates the galaxy. Players can opt to change ships later on if they are looking to change their focus. There’s nothing saying that a crew of smugglers can’t take on a chase down a bounty or kidnap a Guild engineer, it just doesn’t earn as much experience for the ship.

The player characters are a rag tag crew making their way in the distant Procyon sector, far enough from the Core that they can better do what it is that they do out here on the frontier. They take on jobs to pursue personal goals or make some cred to finally retire on. Then they do some Downtime activities to recover, prepare, or train. The Downtime phase is just as abstract as most things in this game system. PCs earn experience by overcoming challenges with actions that fit their chosen playbook (essentially a character class), expressing their beliefs or background or heritage, and by wrestling with their vices and traumas. They also earn experience by attempting Desperate actions where success isn’t required but failure at a Desperate action has some serious consequences to consider.

The core mechanic is the player states what they are doing and what Action they want to use for it. Then the GM tells them the Position and Effect, essentially how controlled the situation is and how effective the outcome will be. Running serpentine across an open field while being fired upon by a unit of stormtroopers would be Desperate and if it’s a short enough distance, probably success would get you across (standard). Desperate is has some serious consequences for failure and partial successes. Risky is the default, and Controlled is being in a safe and low pressure situation. Key is that a player could state that they want to use ANY action from their playbook as long as it makes narrative sense. They could use a social skill like Sway to stab someone with a crys-knife (“I keep talking to distract the goon while I slide in nice and close and slide in the knife”) instead of a combat action like Scrap.

The Blades in the Dark SRD explains this in greater detail, but essentially 1-3 = Fail, 4-5 = partial success or success with consequences, and 6 = success with no consequences. For improving your chances, you can take stress (a limited resource with consequences for running out), use a ship’s gambit (an extra die that you can gain through play), getting help from others when they take on stress to help, or taking a deal from the GM for an extra die but with a guaranteed consequence. You might have to push your luck a few times to be the big gorram hero that gets to see another day.

Final Thoughts …

At one point, there was a small playtest version floating around on the internet before the release of the core book so you might be able to track it down. It had enough material to get a game going and if you have any experience with other Forged in the Dark games, it will be an asset.

The nature of this game abstracts a lot of details and for the D&D player used to looting bodies to make some coin, this game system can be a struggle. If you pick up a fancy blaster during a job, it doesn’t become part of your ongoing gear. A kind GM might throw an extra Cred or two your way for such things but it runs counter to the spirit of the game. Healing is quite quick, removing a character from play for a single job at most as long as they get some medical care or indulge in a vice to recover from the stress they’ve suffered on the last job. Realism is secondary to story which suits Space Opera well.

Overall, I enjoy the play style, even as I struggle to find appropriate consequences for a partial success or failure. It really tests my ability to improvise jobs and scenes as players being players choose to go off in all directions at once.