Blades in the Dark – a game of criminals on the rise in the dark, fantasy city of Doskvol – is a cornerstone of RPG design and play culture. It cemented the reputation of designer John Harper and spawned numerous offshoots by other creators, known as Forged in the Dark. Blades ’68 is the second […]
Blades in the Dark – a game of criminals on the rise in the dark, fantasy city of Doskvol – is a cornerstone of RPG design and play culture. It cemented the reputation of designer John Harper and spawned numerous offshoots by other creators, known as Forged in the Dark. Blades ’68 is the second official expansion for Blades in the Dark, pushing the original setting 100 years forward into a groovy, brighter future of spies and 1960s-inflected sci-fi. Designer Tim Denee tells Tabletop Gaming magazine what attracted him to the idea.
“Something that really excited me about this project was the opportunity to build something new on those foundations, to get a second use out of all that mental investment and brain real estate. It’s like composting; there’s this rich, dark, fertile soil to plant something new in. I get to make an exciting 1960s game – a time period that I love to explore – but it’s in this setting that I have a long history with, so it comes along with all this depth and resonance.”
A graphic designer by day, Tim has shown his love for exploring the aesthetics of games through earlier work such as Odyssey Aquatica, which can be found on his site Old Dog Games.
“It’s the decade where the visual language of the modern world as we know it was born – modern advertising, television, movies, typefaces, you name it,” Tim says, explaining what attracted him to this particular period of history. “My goal was to take my own excitement for that stuff and hopefully translate it into excitement for playing this game. Can we convey the sense of the time period, and the excitement of James Bond and Michael Caine and 1960s paranormal sci-fi, and make all of that cohesive and coherent? Can I make it feel like it’s visually related to Blades in the Dark?”
Revisiting Blades in the Dark in this way also allowed Tim to explore the game’s mechanisms, influenced by a near decade of Blades-inspired games.
“I’d say there are two groups of changes to core Blades, and both are related to this mission statement I wrote for myself early on in the project: “Hectic criminal escapades in a retro–futuristic dystopia.”
“The mechanical penalties of harm are removed,” he explains. “There are still potential harm complications after a score, so you can’t ignore harm entirely, but in general characters can move faster, more recklessly, and not have to worry about every cut and scrape. They can take bigger swings.”
“There’s also a structured procedure for choosing the next score that involves all players – and the GM – brainstorming new opportunities together. This is intended to put the players in the driver’s seat and emphasise the sandbox nature of Blades, which is where I think the game has always been at its strongest.”
Blades ’68 weighs in at just under 450 pages, a hefty supplement for sure. That space is filled with tools for running the game, which Tim describes as: “Random tables, more factions, more districts and all that fun stuff.”
The PDF has been available since July 2026 to those crowdfunders who backed the project on BackerKit, but physical fulfilment has also now begun, meaning Blades ’68 will be hitting retail stores worldwide very soon.
“I love Blades in the Dark, but I know that the dark industrial fantasy setting isn’t to everyone’s taste – nothing is to everyone’s taste! I hope that Blades ’68 might appeal to some of these people, giving them an opportunity to fall in love with Doskvol in the same way myself and many others have.”
Interview by Iain McAllister
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