Blades '68 - Blades in the Dark expansion

Unity War III is over. The leviathans are gone, the lightning towers have failed, and electroplasmic fusion powers a city that has never looked so clean or hidden so much. Blades '68 spins the timeline of Blades in the Dark forward 100 years and drops your crew into a Doskvol of autopods, airships, spy games and revolution: the Age of Consensus, where science has replaced superstition and conformity is the law.

This is the official expansion by designer Tim Denee (Deathmatch Island), written in consultation with John Harper. Inside its 450 pages you'll find new playbooks such as Militants, Swingers, Intellectuals and Paranomalists, new crews with their own rebellious agendas, and a fresh roster of factions, from Racers and Radicals to shadowy Operatives. The B.L.U.E. array hums above the city, and nobody is telling you what it does.

The rules have moved with the times. Blades '68 reshapes the gameplay cycle into crew business, the trouble engine and personal business. It introduces keys and deadlocks as personality traits your scoundrels can lean on for XP or cross off under stress, streamlines harm and resistance, and adds time skips, crew claims and backing factions. The adapted Trouble Engine gives the GM a running machine for faction clocks, entanglements and unrest in the district.

Getting started is quick: four cold opens work as punchy first scores or one-shots, five ticking timebombs set city-wide trouble in motion, and a rolodex of troublemakers keeps every session moving.

Blades '68 is a supplement, not a standalone game: you'll need a copy of Blades in the Dark to play. It comes as a matte hardcover with spot varnish in a portable 6 x 9 inch format, laid out in Tim Denee's distinctive style.

Throw on the red leather jacket, drop the clutch on your autopod, and find out what Doskvol has been hiding behind all that light.