Please note: this thread is intended to be the place for self-promotion.
Please keep blatant self-promotion out of the other design threads.
This thread is for you to tell others about your Forged in the Dark projects.
Neon Black (working title)
In the year 21XX freelancers struggle to survive in a city-state controlled by corporations, underground gangs, and artificial intelligences.
You can find updates on the project, links to play test documents, and short fiction inspired by the world of Neon Black on my Patreon.
I've been hacking away at this game for over a year now. It started as a basic reskin of BitD and has grown into it's own beast as I learn from other designers and study games like Scum & Villainy and The Sprawl and see how different FitD and PbtA games can look and feel. Currently working on v 4.0, hoping to have it done by the end of the month so I can get back to testing.
Here's the bullet points for major changes:
Current Character Playbooks:
Current Crew Playbooks:
Misc. Changes:
There's probably more, but I've got to get to my day job soon.
Beam Saber
A game about the pilots of powerful machines in a war that dominates every facet of life.
https://austin-ramsay.itch.io/beamsaber
Engage challenges on a titanic scale! Each pilot has a custom vehicle created from the ground up to suit their desires. The base frame can be humanoid, a more traditional vehicle, or something completely bizarre! They can be equipped with holo-projectors, grapnel anchor tools, missiles, and much more. Take advantage of your vehicle's Quirks (such as Loads of Guns, Exposed Boosters, and Ominous) to more effectively overcome obstacles. Or lean into your machine's faults for XP! Bombard, Scan, Maneuver, and more to deal with threats.
There are several pilot types players can choose from, each facing The War in a unique way, and all have a powerful vehicle to command.
Aces are daring drivers.
Bureaucrats are clever functionaries.
Empaths are compassionate psychics.
Envoys are diplomats and spies.
Hackers are subversive technicians.
Infiltrators are stealthy operators.
Officers are calculating tacticians.
Scouts are pathfinders and snipers.
Soldiers are terrifying infantrymen.
Technicians are chemists, mechanics, and biologists.
The pilots are part of a squad, which is created through a consensus by all the players. Just like a pilot, the squad gets a “character sheet”.
The Consulate spies and politicks.
The Frontlines grind the enemy to dust.
The Logistics deliver the goods.
The Mechanized Cavalry strikes fast and hard.
The Profiteers sell what people can’t get.
The Recon are spies, thieves, and sneaks.
The R&D advance The War’s technology.
The REDACTED neutralize targets.
Copperhead County: Crime, corruption, capitalism, and government in the modern American South.
CC has been in active Early Access development, exclusively on Itch, for about a year, and on-and-off development for a couple of years before that. Currently the EA period is transitioning to a digital pre-release period as the product takes its final form. I originally envisioned it as a straighter setting hack, but over the years its been thoroughly developed, playtested, and polished over multiple long-term campaigns. I'm proud of how well it works as a game on the FitD engine, alongside my work building an original, unique, realistic, authentic setting that can balance real-world issues and RPG action.
CC features six PC playbooks, three crew playbooks, a full setting, an official soundtrack in two sizes, and an intro-one-shot module (with at least one more module, a variant setting, and other bonus material to come). There are changes to the FitD engine throughout, mostly revolving around my attempts to streamline and standardize aspects of the system, update them to a modern action genre, and make some areas more open-ended and freeform. CC is also built to embrace long-term campaigns, support late-game intrigues, and further encourage wide-ranging, player-driven gameplay across different approaches, job types, and goals.
Songs for the Dusk
A post-apocalyptic science-fantasy tabletop RPG about trying to build a better future.
On Twitter here and on Itch here, featuring a preview edition you can check out for free.
i'll just copy the pitch from the game's itch page:
We have no idea how long it's been since the cataclysm.
Once, we lived at the peak of an era of unbridled human Radiance. Then, everything came crashing down. The cataclysm tore down our cities, broke our machines, and rearranged the very continents beneath our feet. The societies of old Earth are gone. This is a new world, littered with the wreckage of what came before and run through with a strange new physics that feels almost like magic.
The world is littered with ancient machines running haywire, strange and exotic new life forms, and petty tyrants big and small vying for power. But for once we have a chance here: a chance, for once, to build something good, something better than all the human flaws and oppressive structures of the old world. And this is how we do it.
if you like socialist/materialist science-fantasy, give it a shot!
https://assemblyrequisite.itch.io/the-typhoon-atolls
Right here on Itch is my first attempt at messing about with Blades. It mixes up the faction game in an animist fantasy setting, making every powerful entity an NPC and a power that can be engaged with by it's version of attune.
Moth-Light
A dramatic science-fiction adventure game that center’s questions of trust and conviction.
https://moth-lands.itch.io/moth-light
Plagued by giant arthropods known as Moths, the clans of The Twilight struggle to survive, searching the ruins of their Predecessors for the tools, or auger, that will reshape their world.
Moth-Light is inspired by classic adventure fiction as well as rag-tag science fiction stories and strives to facilitate a story rich with interplayer drama, social intrigue, dramatic action, and hope for a better future.
Moth-Light features many calculated revisions to the popular Forged in the Dark formula including but not limited to:
A revamped action system.
The introduction of Strings as an important interpersonal player resource.
Guidelines on how to interpret post-fall tech in your game.
Instructions on how to craft Pacts, Promises, and Vows.
The introduction of “Devil’s Die.”
Six basic playbooks in booklet format including:
The Mouse: A Sneak-Thief
The Favorite: A Charismatic Diplomat
The Hunter: A Tracker and Guide
The Recluse: A Philosopher and Engineer
The Spear: A Martial Warrior
The Will: A Spiritual Adept
And two special playbooks:
The Shell: A Lost Soul Preserved in Steel
The Heart: A Bright Young Soul, bound by a Sacred Duty
If you’d like to learn more, check out the project or feel free to hit me up in DMs or on Twitter @MothLands ✨
Superheroes ITD (The most Placeholder of Placeholder Names)
A FitD game about Superheroes being Super and Being Heroes. Who are you behind the mask? What is the mask? Does great responsibility really come alongside great power?
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1J0w9UGP4cw7pGNTQWfFs-XiitR9u6z0K?usp=sha...
SitD is my love-letter to the Superhero genre. It's the superheroes game I've always wanted to play in, which I never got to play. So I made it. It's currently in early development, with first drafts of most rules and playbooks made, and I'm currently just starting to wrap up a first playtest with my gaming group.
Some of the changes I've made from standard BitD are
Current Playbooks are
And the Team Playbook, The League, a team built from established heroes joining together to fight a greater threat, one beyond themselves.
Haven
A game about killing monsters and surviving the Apocalypse.
It’s the early 21st century and monsters have invaded our world. With them, they brought the apocalypse and all sorts of supernatural problems. Once sprawling metropolises have now become desolate wastelands. Haven is a tabletop role-playing game about a group of people who live in this ruined world and want to do something in order make it like what it used to be. Our world has been invaded by monsters of occultish nature and because of it, strange magics are beginning to run rampant through the lands.
We play to see if the characters can survive the apocalypse, make it a better place, create pockets for humanity to thrive, and defeat our monstrous invaders.
I just released the playtest for Haven! I've been working on this project for a while and I'm so excited that it's finally in the wild. This is only the first version and more features are soon to come! I'm also going to be getting a copy editor soon. If you would rather just read the rules without all the fancy images and 40+pages, feel free to read the text only document that is linked on the page.
Just so there's no confusion and in case you've seen this twice, Haven is heavily Powered by the Apocalypse and was slightly Forged in the Dark. I drew lots of inspiration from both designs and credit it as such.
Hey, just sharing my dungeon builder hack, Wicked Ones. https://b-design.itch.io/wickedones
An extensive description is available on the page, but basically you play as monsters building a dungeon, raiding the overworld, fending off greedy adventurers, and just having a good old monster time.
Neon Black is now in early access on itch! The latest version has updated playbooks and mechanics, as well as a fictional world with dozens of factions, locations, and npcs. New link here: https://sohkrates.itch.io/neon-black
Beast Dream
https://zargogames.itch.io/beast-dream
Befriend and adventure with monsters in this game inspired by Pokemon, using simplified Forged in the Dark mechanics (in early access)
I recently dropped DULL BLADES, a bundle of three incomplete Forged in the Dark games I've worked on.
It includes:
Heart & Glory is a tabletop roleplaying game about adventures in a fantasy world.
dkusan.itch.io/heart-and-glory
There will be heroic battles, powerful sorcery, exploring strange and magical lands and cursed underground caves and dungeons. There will also be action-packed heists, cloak-and-dagger power-struggles and ominous investigations. The heroes you portray will take risks to gain fame, power and wealth, and you will play to find out how their story unravels.
The game uses a different core mechanic than BitD: 2d6+modifier. It is still work-in-progress, but it’s intended to be modular and easily extended with additional rules and various game settings.
A Fistful of Darkness (Weird West)
Imaging a world with the magic and mystery of the frontier: wide open plains of the Old Wild West in all its beauty and madness, where violence and sacrifice dominate every single day. Now add the Hellstone rush, under-ground mayhem in mines and brand new sciences & machines. Don’t forget immigration, injustice, vigilante justice, outlaws, gunslingers, slick talkers and setting suns. This all in the face of an impending doom: Demons and the four riders bringing the end of the world as you know it. How do you make it to the top of this powder keg, which side will you take in the impending war and how much will your soul suffer? Let’s play to find out!
Project PageIn the city of Ebongate, six massive dungeons pose an ever present threat. But in that threat is the promise of treasure and glory!
Play a classic fantasy adventurer in a D&D inspired setting.
Form a guild to aid your excursions into the dungeons.
Explore the six dungeons with expansive maps.
Check out the work in progress here on itch.io at https://nyroka.itch.io/dungeons-in-the-dark (password: dungeons-in-the-dark)!
A sci-fi game of diplomats in space where power ebbs and flows between five major regimes. Either play as members of the same regime working together, or (for the adventurous or one-shots) play as diplomats from different regimes all with your own agendas.
There are no crews, but the regime you work for will influence some of your choices and missions
I love “Aspects” from Fate games, and I’m building those in as the name “Facts”. There are personal facts, scenario facts, world facts, regime facts, consequence facts - all of which can be invoked for additional dice on actions.
Hack
Spy
Study
Make
Finesse
Infiltrate
Manouevre
Skirmish
Command
Consort
Lead
Sway
Not coin or credits, the currency of choice is favour, which you can also bank into your Support Network to improve your lifestyle.
Hi everyone! I'm excited and terrified to put my baby here out into the public eye. It's been cooking long enough.
Aesir is a roleplaying game, not unlike the recently-released Avatar:Legends, and in fact rooted in a similar system. You need some friends, a lot of love for the show, your imagination, and a few decks of cards to play.
It's Roman invaders, reaving berserkers, tricksy fae, petty kings, colossal elemental avatars that reshape the very landscape with their passing, and a group of adventurers trying to carve out their legacy while ancient spirits observe their deeds.
Instead of dice, cards are drawn. Instead of martial arts, runes are drawn. There's some hexcrawling, optional combat rules, and of course... Chimeric animals. The itch page has the playtest doc, character generator (in excel format), crew (called 'Hirds') sheets, and the link to a discord channel.
At this point, I'm looking for playtesters. I'm not exactly outgoing or gregarious, so it's hard for me to ask folks to play. If you have even a little time and interest to check out my game, well, I'd love to hear what you think. :)
Hi folks, my first game PEACEMAKER: A QUICKDRAW WESTERN ROLE PLAYING GAME FOR TWO is finally released! We take on two rival in the moments before a wild west showdown, and we play to find out about the story of our feud through flashbacks. Would love some feedback, if you’re interested and experiencing financial hardship, let me know and I’m very happy to accommodate - just reach out. https://itch.io/game/summary/1304837