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a Forged in the Dark game about the bittersweet joy of growing up, and adventures with your friends

Motivation:

This game aims to answer the question “can I hack together an optimistic, if possibly bittersweet, hack of Blades in the Dark”?

Generally, I’ve set some principles for myself:

  • light hearted adventure, not tragedy or grimdark fantasy
  • life or death situations, but the kids don’t die
  • while growing up is magical, there’s a bittersweet quality to maturing

Approach

Most of this is still in way early stages, but I’ve got some thoughts already:

  • adventures replace the crew
  • Maturities replace Traumas
  • characters don’t ‘trauma’ out, they just go on to middle school or high school at the end of the arc where they took their 4th Maturity
  • Maturities might also give a bonus to an action–they are good things afterall: Compassionate might give +1d to a Consort (or whatever might replace it) roll
  • action ratings become less violent, more child-like…