Blades in the Dark sequel Blades '68 takes inspiration from Deathloop and Soylent Green

Deathmatch Island designer Tim Denee brings Duskvol into the ‘60s

John Harper’s hit tabletop role-playing game Blades in the Dark focuses on gangs fighting for control of Duskvol, a haunted city inspired by Victorian London with splashes of Prague and Venice. Deathmatch Island designer Tim Denee worked with Harper to bring the game’s world 100 years in the future for Blades ‘68, which launched a BackerKit campaign on Feb. 10. The new game will let players fight for change as radicals, intellectuals, or rogue robots.

Denee told Polygon in a video call that the idea for the sequel came from playing Deathloop, which Arkane Studios set after the events of Dishonored. He began wondering what the future of Duskvol would look like.

“Blades is a post-apocalyptic setting, and it’s quite fragile,” Denee said. “The real-world ‘60s [were] kind of colorful, and there’s a certain amount of optimism. I knew I wanted to get there, so I started making foundational decisions around that.”

The sun was shattered in Blades in the Dark, casting Duskvol into an eternal night. The same cataclysm unleashed the dead upon the world, and ghosts are kept at bay by lightning towers fueled by the blood of demonic leviathans. In Blades ‘68, restless spirits are less common, and the city has figured out a way to create artificial light.

“I did want to make sure that the Blades darkness is still there, but it’s just under the surface,” Denee said. “The new force field that protects the city is called The Bubble, which [creates] this feeling that it could burst. The fake daytime is lovely, but a bit too saturated, a bit too psychedelic. There’s a new power source, but it comes from the way they dispose of human bodies. There’s sort of a Soylent Green thing going on as well.”

Denee tweaked Blades in the Dark’s mechanics to fit this tone. While Blades in the Dark characters become traumatized by accumulating too much stress and eventually are forced to retire, Blades ‘68 introduces a system where a character’s traits change over time based on their experiences. A ruthless thief might become generous or gentle, which doesn’t mean they're a broken person, but those experiences can still force them to abandon their life of crime.

While players can embrace the gritty darkness of something like John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Denee’s touchstones also include goofier spy stories like The Venture Bros. and Austin Powers. The popularity of Blades in the Dark allowed Denee to enlist a host of game developers and content creators to provide stretch goals for his campaign. These include new factions, cold opens that can kick off a game session, a fictional catalog showing off Duskvol fashion, and a dive into the city’s underground comics scene.

“We’ve lined up the first 20+ [stretch goals] and we’ve got another couple of dozen that we’d love to invite if things go well enough,” Denee said. “All those people are experienced Forged in the Dark community members, contributors, and game authors. There are so many people who we could ask who have direct involvement in that scene.”

Blades ‘68 offers wild new ideas for characters. Hulls are robots powered by human souls who are trying to recover their memories. Radicals alternate between giving impassioned speeches and blowing things up. Players can work together as a crew of contract killers stuck in a time loop or as thrill-seeking street racers. Blades ‘68 also draws on the dark military RPG Band of Blades to give players control of cohorts that can be sent on extra missions to further the crew’s goals.

“They’re something the player characters care about, which means the GM can put them in danger. That drives a lot of action without having to endanger the player characters themselves,” Denee said. “They can get more entangled with other factions. It accelerates everything a little bit more and makes it a bit faster and more hectic.”

Harper gave Denee his blessing to expand on his work. The two designers regularly communicated while Denee was developing Blades ‘68 and Harper was working on his own Blades in the Dark sequel, Deep Cuts. Harper’s book introduces the concept of Strangers, people from another world who find their way into Duskvol, and one of the places they might come from is Blades ‘68. Denee also weaves time travel throughout his book to encourage linking campaigns.

“It’s really a love letter to Blades in the Dark as well as John Harper’s game design,” Denee said. “I really wanted Blades ‘68 to be an excuse for people to revisit those old campaigns and revisit Duskvol. There’s some nostalgia, but there’s also the excitement of a new trip.”