I love Blades in the Dark. Desperate scoundrels claw their way up through a criminal underworld, doing anything they can to get ahead. A narrative focus that facilitates a conversation about the world rather than getting lost in mechanics. Sharing responsibility for the storytelling, while still keeping things grounded.
I've been on a bit of a magic school kick recently. Originally, I was designing one to use in my setting for Shadowbreaker, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized that a more combat-focused game didn't make a lot of sense. I didn't want to do what Strength of Thousands or Strixhaven did, which was to filter traditional combat-focused adventures through an academic lens - I wanted to capture what school felt like. The overwhelming stress, the drama, heightened emotions. I wanted learning magic and navigating relationships to take center stage - there can (and probably should) be more focused plots and plans going on, but I wanted to be able to just let the story unfold through all those tensions.
Eventually, I realized that Forged in the Dark games were a perfect fit for what I wanted. Stress and Trauma (renamed to Burnout) work perfectly, the narrative focus and built in consequences on rolls works great for letting a story develop over time, and the entanglements are a great way to interject some excitement to mix things up and provide long term consequences.
May I present Academia in the Dark! (working title)
The Game
The core rules are more or less the same as Blades in the Dark with a few things built in from Deep Cuts:
- Less stressful Reactions (max of 3, likely less)
- Slower Level Ups (Advancement Clocks)
- Load (kind of, renamed but same "discrete/conspicuous" vibe)
- I also unified Harm in a similar way to Deep Cuts, such that Harm 1 & 2 do the same thing by 1 is temporary, but instead of the weird "opt in to use harm" I just made all harms be -1d, and wrote that on the Action Checklist so that folks won't forget it as much.
I didn't use most of the changes to the core rules, because frankly I like the original better.
The biggest change is that with Magic being a MUCH more important part of the game, I split it into 4 Actions:
- Bind: Restrict or control extant magical forces.
- Channel: Draw magic into your body.
- Surge: Force magical power towards a target.
- Weave: Create magical constructs (real or illusionary).
To do so I condensed the core 12 actions into 8, and changed the Attributes to Magical, Mental, and Physical to reflect how you try to resist a consequence (with magic power, quick thinking, or physical prowess).
The current draft is very much WIP! The name isn't consistent, the art is still WIP (other than the cover which I LOVE, it's all public domain and not AI), there's a lot that needs to be filled in, and the formatting got kinda fucked up when transferring to PDF, especially the bullet points (this is what I get for using Google Docs instead of an actual software). It's good enough for me to start playtesting though, and we've been having a lot of fun doing so thus far!
The Characters
PCs are all fledgling mages. Talk with your group about how old you want them to be, but one way or another they're... not very good at things. Yet! They can only have rank 1 Action Ratings to start out, and only know a single pretty minor magic power. They grow more powerful as they continue their careers, and as they go from Lower-Level to Mid-Level to Upper-Level students.
Instead of discrete Playbooks based on Archetypes, characters are differentiated by what Magic they learn. There are 9 magical aspects: Earth, Flame, Green, Mind, Shroud, Sight, Storm, Veil, and Wild. Each has a Core ability that must be learned before any other, and 2 each of Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced abilities that can be learned by Lower-/Mid-/Upper-Level students respectively. You can learn a number of magical abilities equal to your current school year (plus your starting Magical Origin), and can branch into multiple magical aspects (though doing so is slower).
All these restrictions (paired with slower advancement) are meant to optimize the game for long-term play, playing through the entire academic career of your party! Note: for short campaigns of 6-10 sessions, you likely want to reduce Advancement Length, perhaps -1 clock per choice (min 1) or double the rate of accruing XP.
On a narrative level, characters choose an Upbringing, Patron (the school is expensive AF), and Initial Reputation to shape how they will be perceived in this elite, classist setting. They are driven by their Fears, accrue Stress and Burnout, and will succeed or fail by their Relationships.
Adventures
Blades in the Dark™ is a trademark of One Seven Design. The Forged in the Dark Logo is © One Seven Design, and is used with permission.The setting of Blades in the Dark is more or less a built-in content generation engine. I don't think I can make a Magic School that is as believably dense as Duskvol (though one of my big WIP projects is fleshing it out and giving the GM more to work with). Instead, I expanded Entanglements into two separate chunks: Social Entanglements, which cue off of the Popularity and Rep of individual characters, and Magical Mayhem, which cues off of the school's Chaos and Instability (caused by casting spells).
In addition, most sessions (especially to start) will include a Class Assignment. These won't usually be as weighty as a full BitD Score, but hopefully the fact that it's a magic school crawling with magical creatures, chaotic magic, and a library that wants to eat you will keep them interesting! Social Entanglements and Magical Mayhem are also resolved during the session, rather than at the end - the PCs either solve the relevant problems or things get increasingly difficult for the PCs.
Hopefully, this combination should leave the PCs with a lot to juggle - just like in real school! But, hopefully more dramatic and fun.
The Assignments, paired with the Coursework downtime action, determine the PCs grades, which in turn determine their status and opportunities. Optionally, you can have exams that threaten to undo all the PCs hard work!
To some degree, long term plotlines will emerge naturally. Rivals will cause problems, friends will need help or betray the party, and they're stuck with these folks for years, so they'll have to get along somehow! But many groups will probably want longer threads as well. Mysteries are a great fit for school settings, whether sinister plots by teachers, ancient prophecies, or kingdom-shaking cataclysms.
Next Steps
My current worklist includes:
- Playtesting! (currently just a small 2-player group)
- Fleshing out the NPCs/Characters (I have a draft, but needs more detail)
- Fleshing out what challenges the school might present (the Library and other significant magical places)
Once all that is in place, I'll try to write up more advice for GMs based on my experience running it, fill in anything that's missing, and do some proofreading/formatting/etc.
This work is based on Blades in the Dark (found at http://www.bladesinthedark.com/), product of One Seven Design, developed and authored by John Harper, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Blades in the Dark™ is a trademark of One Seven Design. The Forged in the Dark Logo is © One Seven Design, and is used with permission.
All art used is Public Domain. No AI was used in the creation of this project.
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