Forged in the Dark crew (mechanics only)

@opencharacter/fitd-crew is an unofficial, mechanics-only model of a Forged in the Dark crew for the Open Character Format, built from the game's System Reference Document (SRD) only: the crew sheet's tier, rep, heat, upgrades, cohorts, claims and faction status, and the crew's rolls, as data an OCF engine runs. It is for app developers who want Forged in the Dark crews beside the scoundrels of @opencharacter/fitd-scoundrel.

It is not affiliated with or endorsed by One Seven Design or John Harper. It carries no rules text, flavor text, art or logo from the game or the SRD: the text in i18n/en.yaml is names and short descriptions written for the pack.

Install and load

pnpm add @opencharacter/engine @opencharacter/fitd-crew @opencharacter/fitd-scoundrel

This release needs spec 0.3: @opencharacter/engine 0.3.0 or later. An engine for an older spec refuses it (spec-version-unsupported).

A crew is its own character file, loaded with this pack instead of the scoundrel pack (an example crew). Each scoundrel links to it through the scoundrel pack's crew slot, and the app passes the crew's computed values as the link's view:

import { computeSheet, loadRuleset } from '@opencharacter/engine';
import crewPack from '@opencharacter/fitd-crew';
import scoundrelPack from '@opencharacter/fitd-scoundrel';

const crewRules = loadRuleset([crewPack]);
const scoundrelRules = loadRuleset([scoundrelPack]);
if (!crewRules.ok || !scoundrelRules.ok) throw new Error('packs failed to load');

const crewSheet = computeSheet(crewRules.ruleset, crew); // crew: the crew's character file
const view = {
  id: crew.id,
  values: Object.fromEntries(Object.entries(crewSheet.values).map(([k, v]) => [k, v.value])),
};
// scoundrel.links: { 'fitd-scoundrel:crew': crew.id }
const sheet = computeSheet(scoundrelRules.ruleset, scoundrel, [], {
  'fitd-scoundrel:crew': view,
});

The scoundrel pack reads the crew's tier, Mastery, Workshop, Training and Quality upgrades, its Rigging and members.* fields, and sends heat to it (to: { link: crew }, applied to the crew file). Neither pack depends on the other. A new crew starts with create-crew (the guided start crew, or random). The guide on packs and rulesets covers loading, and other characters covers links.

Scope: the SRD only

The pack holds only what the game's SRD (CC-BY 3.0, https://bladesinthedark.com; source text at https://github.com/amazingrando/blades-in-the-dark-srd-content) contains on crews: One Seven Design's terms put the setting and the other non-SRD material off limits. The SRD's crew playbook is a template, so the pack has:

• No named crew types. Each table makes its own ("three to six options are good", the SRD says), as homebrew crewType items (below). Without one, a crew takes its abilities and favored operation from the SRD's pools.
• The SRD's 16 crew special abilities as one pool: Deadly, Death Veil, No Traces, Patron, Predators, Fiends, Forged in the Fire, War Dogs, Anointed, Accord, High Society, Pack Rats, Second Story, Synchronized, All Hands and Just Passing Through.
• The SRD's upgrades: the lair (Boat and Carriage, Hidden, Quarters, Secure, Vault, Workshop), Training (Insight, Prowess, Resolve and Playbook, here "Personal"), Mastery, Quality (Documents, Gear, Implements, Supplies, Tools, Weapons), cohorts, and its examples of a crew type's own upgrades: Rigging, Prison Contacts, Elite cohorts (one per gang type), Hardened, Composed, Underground Maps and Passkeys, and Camouflage.
• The SRD's 34 claims: its 29 sample claims (Turf and 28 more) and the 5 prison claims (an Allied Claim is a claim marked allied).
• Cohorts: gangs (Adepts, Rooks, Rovers, Skulks, Thugs) and experts, with the SRD's four edges and four flaws.
• The operations the SRD names (20), for the hunting grounds' favored operation and the claims' payoff.
• Lair, hunting grounds, tier, hold, rep, turf, heat, wanted level, coin, crew xp and advancement, payoff, incarceration, entanglements and faction status, as the SRD gives them.

It names no factions, people or places: the GM defines the factions.

What's modeled

• Tier (0 to IV) and hold (strong or weak), as inputs; the tier in prison (+1 with Prison Contacts).
• Rep: a track of 12, one shorter for each turf claim held (up to 6), never shorter than 6. Fiends counts each wanted level as turf, Accord up to three factions at +3 status. Turf gained with more rep marked than the shorter track holds leaves it full.
• Heat (0–9) and wanted level (0–4). Heat reaching 9 raises the wanted level by 1 and clears heat; heat past 9 carries over in the same change.
• Crew coin: 4, or 8 and 16 with the Vault's two boxes.
• Crew special abilities (abilities.crew): one, plus one per ability advance, from the pool (the rules-level choice crew-abilities), or from a homebrew crew type's own list. With mechanics: Patron, Fiends, Accord, Death Veil, No Traces, High Society, Just Passing Through, War Dogs, Predators, Second Story, and those the members read (below).
• Upgrades as the boxes marked: each is an integer, so an advance's two boxes are an allocation. Mastery takes four boxes, Hardened and Composed three, the Boat, Carriage, Secure lair and Vault two. The Rigging names the two kinds of item it carries free (the choice rigging). Boxes marked, cohorts included, are checked against those earned (upgrade-boxes: two starting upgrades, two more at creation, two per upgrade advance). A found Hidden lair moves for the tier in coin (relocate-lair).
• A table's own crew type (homebrew, of the crewType type): it lists its own upgrades (upgrades), its starting upgrades and starting gang (startingCohort: a gang type, or none; counted in the boxes earned), its claim map (claims), and its own special-ability and operation choices. With one, another type's upgrades are a rules issue (special-upgrades); without one, every crew-specific upgrade is open.
• Cohorts as copies: a gang (one of five types, and an optional second type) or an expert (its type in words). Each has a label, one or two edges and as many flaws, and harm 0 to 4 (weakened, impaired, broken, dead). A cohort costs two upgrade boxes and a second type two more. Quality and scale are computed: a gang's are the tier, an expert's quality the tier + 1 at scale 0; Training Rooms adds 1 to the scale of the gang type its copy names.
  • cohort-roll: the cohort's quality in dice for a task of its type, 0 for anything else; −1d impaired, +1d for an Elite type. A broken cohort acts only when commanded by a member with Leader (+1 effect).
  • cohort-recover heals a level of harm in downtime, two with a scoundrel's help; replace-cohort replaces a dead one for the tier + 2 coin.
• Advancement: crew xp (8). A full track offers crew-advance: a new special ability (with a crew type, asked in its own special-ability choice only) or two upgrade boxes; xp clears, and the outcome's stash (tier + 2) is for each member's sheet. develop on a full rep track: weak hold becomes strong, or strong hold pays the new tier × 8 coin (half with Patron, 2 less with Hardcase) to raise the tier and drops to weak; rep clears.
• tier-roll: a fortune roll of the tier (a Secure lair against an intruder).
• Claims as copies, one per claim held, with the players' label for the place and the faction it came from. lair.lost turns off the lair claims' benefits.
  • Turf counts toward rep (at most 6, turf-limit).
  • Income claims (Protection Racket, Vice Den, Fighting Pits, Side Business) have claim-income: a tier roll, coin equal to the highest die less heat (halved at war), up to the crew's capacity.
  • payoff after a score: rep (2, ± the target faction's tier against the crew's; none for a quiet operation, half with No Traces), coin, and heat (+1 high profile, +1 hostile turf, +2 killing unless Death Veil, +1 at war), plus the claims' coin, Cover Operation's −2 heat and Victim Trophies' +1 rep, less a tithe (the tier + 1) when the crew pays one. Rep and heat go on the sheet; the coin is the outcome's, for the players to divide.
  • engagement-roll: 1d, the GM's net advantages, and the plan's dice from claims (City Records, Cover Identities, Ancient Altar, Secret Pathways) and from Second Story and Predators.
  • incarceration-roll: the tier in prison, +1d per Guard Payoff; the wanted level drops by 1 and heat clears; a critical gives +3 rep; a 6 or critical wins a prison claim (or an Allied Claim, never turf nor on the crew type's own map) and +1 status with a faction helped inside; a 1–3 marks a trauma on the member passed as prisoner (none with Cell Block Control). The outcome gives the sentence's wanted level, 1 lower with Parole Influence.
  • seize-claim: the claim, −2 status with the faction it was taken from, and +1 with any of its enemies the crew names.
• Factions the GM defines: add-faction adds a copy of the generic faction with the GM's name for it, its tier, hold and the crew's status; a homebrew item of type faction is a standard copy on every crew. Each copy's status (−3 to +3) is changed with faction-status; its tier and weakHold follow the faction in play. Creation picks a faction already on the sheet, or adds one by the name the players give it (below). payoff and resolve-entanglement take the faction's tier as a parameter when there is none. War with any faction: +1 heat per score, half income from claims, a hold lost and, with weak hold, a tier, and one downtime activity per member (War Dogs keeps the hold, the tier and two activities).
• Entanglements: entanglement-roll (the wanted level in dice, read in the heat column; the GM picks one of the two the table gives; a Cooperation with no faction at +3 is avoided) and resolve-entanglement (paying, forfeiting rep or coin by the faction's tier, losing status, war, giving up a claim or hold, handing someone over, or the questioning roll). The harm a member suffers is the outcome's harm.
• The crew's downtime (crew-downtime, once per downtime): High Society's and Just Passing Through's −1 heat, and No Traces' +1 rep with no heat left.
• For members (members.*, read by the scoundrel pack): Deadly's dots as a count and the ratings they offer; dice for resistance (Forged in the Fire), against the supernatural (Anointed), asset rolls (Pack Rats, Warehouses), recovery (Infirmary), gathering information (Informants) and about the elite (High Society), passing as ordinary citizens (Just Passing Through); Synchronized group actions; the ratings a held claim's site helps; the prison load (Smuggling). The quality of the members' items of each kind and the extra stress and trauma box (a full Composed or Hardened) are exposed too.
• Contacts as copies with the players' name for each; one may be the favorite. Hunting grounds, lair and reputation are the players' words; the crew's name is the app's.
• Creation: a guided start, crew, and a random one, random, following the SRD's steps. create-crew asks for a crew type only when the table has made one. Without one, it takes a special ability (Deadly, the SRD's first, is recommended) and the favored operation from the pools, and the crew marks its two starting upgrades itself (any upgrade). With one, the type's starting upgrades and gang are marked for it and its own choices are asked with the pending picks. Then 2 coin; the hunting grounds (1 coin for room to work, 2 for +1 status, or nothing and −1 status); two more upgrade boxes or a new gang or expert; the statuses the upgrades and the favorite contact bring; the pending picks (a type's choices, the Rigging's kinds); the players' words; and finishCreation.
  • Factions at creation: run add-faction first for each faction the GM has defined, or pass the factions' names as create-crew's params (groundsFaction, helpedFaction, harmedFaction, friendFaction, enemyFaction). A step whose name is given adds a new faction with that name and the status the step brings (its tier and hold for the GM to set); a step without one picks a faction on the sheet, factions the earlier steps added included. A status with neither (no faction on the sheet and no name, as in a random start on a blank crew) is only reported in the outcome (groundsStatus, helpedStatus, harmedStatus, friendStatus, enemyStatus) for the GM to record.
  • The SRD creates crews by choice, so the random start's odds are the pack's: every pick uniform over what the guided start offers, the upgrade boxes one at a time to an upgrade with a box free (leaving out Mastery and the three-box upgrades), and every faction status drawn (on a faction named or on the sheet, when there is one).
• Sheet layout: display groups for actions (crew rolls, after the score, crew downtime, factions, crew creation) and content (crew type, abilities, claims with turf first, cohorts by kind, cohort traits, contacts with the favorite first, operations, factions). The crew-specific upgrades show all of them without a crew type, a homebrew type's own with one.

Add-on packs

A pack that depends on fitd-crew (a crew-type or setting pack) adds content of its types: crew types, crew abilities, operations, claims, cohort traits, contacts and factions join the creation picks, the random start's draws and the advance's picks as the core's do (the SRD has no crew types, so a crew-type pack's are the ones offered).

• Gang types are the family fitd-crew:gang (adepts, rooks, rovers, skulks, thugs). An add-on adds one by adding it to the family (families: { 'fitd-crew:gang': [sappers] }), declaring its upgrades.elite.<type> field (tagged upgrade.special), and adding the value to the open enums that hold a gang type: fitd-crew:types.crewType.fields.startingCohort, fitd-crew:types.claim.fields.scaleGang, fitd-crew:types.cohort.state.gangType, fitd-crew:types.cohort.state.extraGangType and fitd-crew:types.claim.state.trainedGang, named in its text under the core's keys. The creation's gang pick offers the family's types, the add-on's named by its actions.create-crew.options.<type>.name (found through the ruleset's familyOrigins), and elite and claim scale read them by key. A claim like Training Rooms sets trainsGang to show its trainedGang pick.
• Naming what an add-on adds: it names each added value, option or key in its own text, under the key this pack would use, and createText finds it there when the app passes the ruleset's enumOrigins, optionOrigins and familyOrigins. For example, the gang type sappers is actions.create-crew.options.sappers.name: Sappers in the creation's gang pick (through familyOrigins) and types.cohort.state.gangType.values.sappers.name: Sappers as a cohort's gang type (through enumOrigins).
• Tagged steps, for an add-on's rules-level option effects: creation.crew-type, creation.ability, creation.operation, creation.more (two upgrades or a cohort) and creation.gang of create-crew, and advance.crew (crew-advance's pick); for its changes effects, creation.start (starting coin, upgrades and cohort).
• Closed: a cohort's kind (gang or expert), a faction's hold, the six plans and the payoff targets, which the core's rules read.

Text only

• All Hands: the SRD doesn't say what the cohort rolls, and downtime activities are the app's.
• Upgrades: the vehicles themselves, Quarters, Underground Maps and Passkeys, Camouflage.
• Cohort edges and flaws: decided in play.

Out of scope

• The setting: factions, people and places, the map and the claim maps of the book's crew types.
• Teamwork between members: the scoundrel pack's group action and assist.
• Why a faction rises or falls on the ladder, and the factions' own clocks: the GM's; the crew sheet tracks where each stands.
• Extra downtime activities bought with coin or rep, and the boss's patience clock when a tithe goes unpaid: the app's or the GM's.

Rule readings

• SRD only: no named crew types, and only the SRD's 16 crew abilities, its upgrades (including its examples of a crew type's own, open to a crew without a type), 34 claims and 20 operations. A table's own crew types and factions are homebrew or the GM's.
• Random start: the SRD creates crews by choice, so the odds are the pack's: every pick uniform over what the guided start offers, the two upgrade boxes one at a time (Mastery and the three-box upgrades left out, since two boxes can't finish them), and every faction status recorded.
• War and hold: the SRD reads the hold lost to war as the war starts; the pack reads it while the war lasts, so it comes back when the war ends.
• Heat past 9 rolls over: 7 heat and 4 more is a wanted level and 2 heat.
• Training Rooms records its gang type on the copy, since the SRD leaves the type to the crew. The Offertory's occult operations are read as acquisition, consecration and sacrifice.
• Claim maps are a suggested order, not a rule, so they aren't enforced.

Limitations

• A crew can't read its members (a link slot holds one character), so nothing on the crew sheet can count or sum over them, and an advance's stash is outcome data for the app. Crew actions take members as participants where one member matters (the prisoner, a cohort's commander).

License

License metadata: mechanics-only, like fitd-scoundrel. The crew rules come from the game's SRD; only mechanics and names are taken from it, so the pack declares no text license. Its credit carries the SRD's attribution, which apps show with the pack:

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/).

LICENSE gives the pack's terms: the contributors' own work in it is under CC0 1.0 (the repository's default for packs), and the SRD's material stays under CC-BY 3.0 with the attribution above. The pack has no other notices.