John Harper’s Blades in the Dark is a heist game set in a sunless, pseudo-Victorian city plagued by ghosts. The inspiration gleaned from Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories and the Dishonored videogame series (also Sunless Sea and Thief, now that I am thinking about it) is pretty clear.

Blades is a game about scoundrels. Each player has a specific character, of course, but how they lock together informs the meta-character of their Crew, which in turn goes a long way in defining how they will play. That can be anything from a bunch of bruisers to a weirdo cult.

Play centers on executing, and dealing with the fall-out, of scores. Notice I didn’t mention planning. That’s because Blades is improvisational. Success and failure at skill checks not only determines the result of the action, but also often defines the situation going forward – failures require consequences, which means the GM needs to conjure all manner of fuckery out of thin air as needed.

To combat this, players have two tools. First, their equipment isn’t determined ahead of time. They check items off as needed, up to a set limit. So, if they are suddenly need to repel down a wall, then they happen to have packed some rope.

The second tool is flashbacks. In exchange for stress (the game’s damage system), players can narrate what they did before the heist to prepare for the situation that has just been presented to them. Oh, see, I paid off Tom the Doorman so he won’t give us any trouble, here’s how it went. If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is, but is also crazy fun and, as a GM, incredibly freeing.

While the immediate concern of Blades is individual heists, there is a larger legacy component preoccupied with the reputation of the crew and its holdings. The life of a scoundrel is short, after all, so this meta-game gives the crew a place in the world and a way for characters to cycle in and out while maintaining a rich continuity.