I’m a huge fan of Blades in the Dark, and I was very excited for Deep Cuts, a major expansion designed by the game’s original creator, John Harper, with additional design and writing by Sean Nittner, Pam Punzalan, and James Mendez Hodes. I backed the crowdfunding campaign for the book and, once I held it in my hands, I was immediately sucked in and read the whole thing cover to cover.
Then I settled in and started doing some deep thinking about Deep Cuts.
The book can be roughly divided into two parts: The first adds a bunch of new material to the post-apocalyptic steampunk setting of Doskvol. The second radically revises the rules of the game, effectively offering a sort of do-it-yourself kit for assembling an ersatz second edition of the game.
SETTING
The setting material is a goulash of goodness. Blades in the Dark is, of course, designed to be a modular, sandbox game, and Deep Cuts is basically just expanding the toybox full of goodies that you can drop into your game.
Innovations provide a selection of new equipment, including rare items like a Bolton Autocycle or a Sparkrunner Rig that could easily become the target of a score or an Acquire action. I really like the presentation of most of these items as new technology in the setting itself: Part of the steampunk aesthetic is that technology is marching forward. You can take this stuff and feed it into your campaign one or two items at a time, blaring it as headline news, lightly seasoning it as background detail, or framing it up as a surprising new threat in the middle of a score.
Squeezed into the middle of the Innovations section is a whole new calendar that renames the six months of the year. This really reflects how Deep Cuts is just a semi-random collection of stuff John Harper created for his home games. There’s not a single, unifying theme or thesis here. It’s really just a guy saying, “Hey! Look at this cool thing I made!”
Next up are twenty-five new Factions. If you’ve run multiple campaigns of Blades in the Dark over the past decade (as I have), then these are a welcome breath of fresh air. You and your players may have become intimately familiar with the Crows and Red Sashes, but now you can frame up whole new starting situations with factions like the Ink Rakes, Ironworks Labor, and Rowan House.
My only reservation with these new factions is that so many of them are “infrastructure.” The firefighters, cabbies, and railworkers are an important part of the city, but a multitude of faction goals like “modernize the guild” and “formalize their union” really underline that they’re more bureaucratic functionaries than sources of adventure. Nonetheless, there’s a lot of good meat in here, too, and perhaps inspiration will strike and turn stuff like the fire brigade’s PR campaign into your campaign’s Chinatown.
Also tucked away in this section is a 30-year plan to expand Doskvol, pushing out into the ghostlands and adding four new districts. This is an incredibly cool concept, immediately driving all kinds of internecine strife while also providing a long-term scaffolding for evolving the setting in a game that encourages time-skips and decompressed downtimes.
Heritages and Backgrounds then provide a wealth of new information about the wider world beyond Doskvol, while also giving players new structures for adding depth and color to their characters. Did you come from a family of Blood Cullers or Lockport Scummers? Before you joined the crew, were you a roof runner or a farmhand? Being able to flip through these sections and have concepts like “refugee occultist” or “electrochemist from a family of lightning couriers” leap off the page is delightful. (In fact, the only thing I might do differently is put them on random tables so that players looking for inspiration can just roll-and-combine.)
THE CAMPAIGN CATALYST
SPOILERS FOR THE DEEP CUTS CAMPAIGN FRAME
Wrapping up and also tying together the new setting material is a campaign frame: Fractures in reality have connected Doskvol to another reality. Strangers from this other world are slipping through into Doskvol, bringing with them strange technology and magic. Others are vanishing from this world and passing into the other. Factions are slowly beginning to learn the truth about what’s happening and are secretly moving to take advantage of it.
This is a fun concept with (if you’ll pardon the pun) a lot of dimensions to be explored. Harper weaves it into faction clocks and NPCs, then fleshes it out with mission profiles for every crew type. Combined with the structures for emergent play which are the backbone of Blades in the Dark, this all primes the pump and gives you almost everything you need to introduce the Others and hit the ground running. It is, very literally, a catalyst — something you can inject into your campaign and initiate a run-away chain reaction.
The only problem here is that Harper wants to leave the precise nature of the other world up to the individual GM. He offers several possibilities:
- Victorian Earth
- Mirror Universe
- Demonic World
- Time Travel
- Lady Blackbird
Or any number of other possibilities you might imagine.
On the one hand, it’s great to offer this kind of flexibility. On the other hand, the practical effect is that nothing attached to the catalyst can have any kind of specificity. It, by necessity, ends up as just vague handwaving and a few encouraging, “You’ve got this!” cheers shouted to the GM.
For example, the members of Rowan House are secretly descended from the Others. Does that mean they’re demon-spawn or that their grandmother was from 1810 London? It’s a radical difference. And because the book can’t give you an answer, they end up being… nothing at all. Deep Cuts has to avoid making strong, interesting choices over and over again.
So the catalyst is a really cool idea and it demonstrates the broad outlines of how you could implement big, widespread events like this into your Blades in the Dark campaign. But it also leaves you with all the hard work of making it playable.
SYSTEMS
At this point we transition to the back half of the book, which is loaded up with dozens of changes to the core mechanics of Blades in the Dark. To be clear: Very little of this is new mechanical systems. It’s almost entirely changes to the existing mechanical systems.
Let’s deep cut to the chase here: I did not like this section of the book.
There are a few interesting nuggets buried in here, but the vast majority of the material makes the game significantly worse. If a second edition of Blades in the Dark were published with these changes implemented, I would not play it or run it.
Let’s break down a few examples.
EFFECTS & CONSEQUENCE
Let’s start with something I really liked: On page 101, Deep Cuts includes a unified Effects & Consequences table providing escalating adjectives and mechanical effects for Limited, Standard, Great, and Extreme effects. (For example, a standard effect of Intimidated might be downstepped to a limited effect of Hesitant or upstepped to a great effect of Afraid or an extreme effect of Dominated.)
This table is incredibly useful, particularly for a new GM trying to wrap their noggin around the concepts of position, effect, and consequences.
LOAD
I also liked the expanded system for Load, which not only finesses the handling of exceptionally heavy objects in the system, but also uses Load as a way of managing encumbrance gains and complications during a job.
HARM
John Harper saw that some players in actual play videos would forget to apply the penalties from Harm to their die rolls, so he produced a revised system in which Harm has no inherent mechanical effect. Instead, it becomes a tag system that the GM can choose to invoke to create complications, reduce position/effect, or… apply a penalty to the die roll. When the GM chooses to invoke the condition, the player gets to mark XP.
Ugh.
First, I’m not generally a fan of dissociated tag systems where the reality of the game world only meaningfully exists when someone arbitrarily chooses to “invoke” it.
Second, the response to players being unable to keep track of a dice modifier for their characters should NOT be, “Well, I guess there’s just no choice but to require the GM to keep track of every individual wound suffered by every single PC and also be responsible for invoking them in way that’s fair and effective in some nebulously undefined way.”
This is part of a long trend in RPGs of making the GM responsible for everything that happens at the game table. I strongly feel that the entire hobby needs to break away from laying this immense burden on the GM’s shoulders, not needlessly multiply it.
TRAUMA
This module lets the players mark XP if they use their Trauma in a way that creates a problem or complication for them during play, which is a great way of reinforcing it as a roleplaying prompt.
Trauma is also modified so that it’s no longer permanent, with options given for recovery. This, obviously, blunts the core game’s relentless march to character retirement, which makes it a nice option for groups that don’t want as much character turnover. Another module gives options other than prison time for removing the crew’s Wanted Levels, to similar effect.
Personally, I think there’s a significant drawback here: The original game created a low level of character churn, which systemically encouraged players to create multiple characters. This, in turn, put the narrative focus of the game on the crew, rather than the individual characters, and diversified the player’s experience and interactions with the game world. Moving away from this also means moving away from one of the things that made Blades in the Dark unique and distinguished it from other RPGs.
ACTION
Which brings us to the Action module, in which Deep Cuts overhauls the entire core mechanic of the game.
And, frankly, Harper makes a dog’s dinner of it.
Take Devil’s Bargains, for example. In the original game, the GM could offer a devil’s bargain: The player could gain extra dice on an action roll by accepting an additional cost — collateral damage, Harm, Coin, sacrificing an item, starting a clock, betraying a friend, adding Heat, etc. In Deep Cuts, on the other hand, the term “devil’s bargain” now refers to any time the GM requires the players to make a roll. But also the extra dice thing. And also you can offer a devil’s bargain to let them skip the dice roll entirely.
A useful term of art is turned into a mess, while at the same time trying to position it as a central axis around which the game turns.
This all ties into the new concept of Threat Rolls, which essentially replace action rolls. When using this new core mechanic, instead of setting position and effect, the GM simply sets the negative consequence that will happen on a failed roll and then tells you what action rating to roll: On a 6+ you avoid the consequence. On a 4/5 you suffer a reduced consequence. On a 1-3 you suffer the full consequence.
This whole mechanic essentially waves a white flag at those who want to run Blades in the Dark exactly like D&D (with the DM telling the players what to roll and what the result will be). Good for them, I guess. But, once again… Ugh.
I’m just not interested in Blades in the Dark being turned into generic mush.
DOWNTIME
Deep Cuts also heavily revises the Downtime system. This is more of a mixed bag.
On the one hand, there’s a cool new Debt mechanic and new rules for using Banks. The new guidelines for Heat — which take a base rate based on Tier and then modify it by Target, Chaos, Death, and Evidence — are also great, along with the supporting guidelines for modeling actions to reduce or mitigate the Heat from a job.
There’s a similarly revised set of guidelines for Payoffs. These are also useful, although it’s worth noting that they significantly increase the amount of Coin the PCs will earn per job.
On the other hand, there’s stuff like the new Entanglements system, which is designed to remove random dice rolls. The overall effect, though, seems to greatly flatten the experience: Outcomes become predictable and routine. There are no surprises and no variations from one Downtime to the next. It also removes a lot of the procedural content generation aspects that make Blades in the Dark such a fun sandbox engine.
CONCLUSION
I don’t like Deep Cuts.
I loathe the mechanical changes. They’re disastrous and, honestly, pretty depressing. It’s always sad to see a game heading in the wrong direction, and that’s even more true when the game was something truly special like Blades in the Dark. If the book was limited to its mechanical content, I’d probably give it an F-.
However, almost half of the book is the new setting material, and while that has a few duds and some missteps, there’s a ton of useful stuff in there that will definitely enhance and expand your Blades campaigns. Therefore, with the book only costing $25, I think dedicated fans can just barely justify picking up a copy for the setting material alone.
GRADE: D
Designer: John Harper
Additional Design & Development: Sean Nittner, Pam Punzalan, James Mendez Hodes, Allison Arth, Sharang Biswas, Sidney Icarus
Publisher: Evil Hat
Cost: $25
Page Count: 128
I’ve been wondering whether I should use any of the Deep Cuts mechanics when starting my first game, but I am a little lost. How does the Threat roll differ so much from the Action roll on the core rules? The difference I see is that, instead of measuring success of an action, Threat measures consequences only. But besides that, to me it seems like it’s largely the same, right? The player is still choosing the action, and the the GM is setting the risk/position. “Dangerous” was already the default.
I really feel like I’m missing something. I like that the Threat roll assumes that actions are successful, which seems like a right step in the direction of the game’s core tenant that the PCs are all competent.
> “dissociated tag systems where the reality of the game world only meaningfully exists when someone arbitrarily chooses to “invoke” it.”
I don’t think I understand how the original Harm system for BitD fails to meet that exact definition, if the one in Deep Cuts does (which I don’t think does, specifically because it is not supposed to be “arbitrary” or dissociated. It should not be a choice by the GM to call upon it or not based on want, it represents something present in the narrative and is supposed to be called upon whenever that thing in the narrative would require it be.)
That said, where I think Deep Cuts errors on these changes to Harm conditions is by presenting them as a tool for the GM to use, instead of as one for offloading that kind of cognitive load onto the players. The point of that type of structure is usually to precisely incentivize players to remember that kind of stuff on their own, as they will now stand to gain something from doing so as well (there are many ways as to how that ends up being helpful, but that’s not the point. Suffice to say, it helps with some flavors of neurospiciness.)
Any problem of having to “invoke” Harm the system in Deep Cuts has, the original one also has, since it leaves the situations to which any instance of Harm applies flexible, up to interpretation.
Where the incentive structure makes it worse in *some* sense is by increasing the complexity of the GM’s decision process regarding the frequency of rolls, which is an already present struggle in any games with resource systems (most of them?), to which this change adds yet another layer.
@Sam wrote: The player is still choosing the action, and the the GM is setting the risk/position.
In the Deep Cuts system, it doesn’t default to the player choosing the action. It defaults to the GM. See page 96.
The player can then veto, technically, but the net effect is a traditional skill check like that found in D&D or Call of Cthulhu.
The section can be quite confusing, and moreso if you try to square it up with the existing mechanics when it’s actually a complete replacement of the existing mechanics.
>”This is part of a long trend in RPGs of making the GM responsible for everything that happens at the game table. I strongly feel that the entire hobby needs to break away from laying this immense burden on the GM’s shoulders, not needlessly multiply it.”
Preach, brother. I really dislike seeing games that place the burden of keeping up with a character’s paperwork or mechanics onto the GM. Especially when it comes to Character Disadvantages where the player doesn’t need to do anything except cross their fingers and hope the GM forgets to invoke it. It feels like giving the GM homework when they’ve already got a lot on their plate. Same for nebulous and undefined ways of invoking consequences. I always have a voice in my head questioning if I’m being properly fair and also obviously fair. While undefined systems can allow for a lot of narrative freedom, that can also lead to a player perceiving things as not universally fair and that they or someone is being singled out or given favoritism. It’s sometimes nice to have negative consequences spelled out nice and clear so everyone knows it’s properly fair, nothing personal, and assures the GM that this is the appropriate level of consequence.
Good review, man. I’ve been doing a mating dance with Blades in the Dark for a while and just haven’t pulled the trigger on buying it. You being a fan of it (save for this expansion, of course) is a big plus.
I feel mixed about the Threat Roll myself but Deep Cuts says “The player has the final call on which action rating to roll” (page 91). So that part isn’t meaningfully different from base game Blades.
There is a mild difference in how the roll is framed: Deep cuts suggests that the GM proposes an action rating, then the player gets a chance to disagree and say what action they actually want. But in practice that already happens in Blades, in my experience. The GM usually says something like “That sounds like Wreck”. The PC still has final say in both systems, so I don’t think this is a fundamental difference.
I have the Deep Cuts v1.1 instead of release v1.2, but page 94 of my pdf under the “Choosing the Action” heading (somewhat) clearly states that while the GM proposes an action to use for the roll the player has the final call on what actually gets rolled. There’s no discussion about weaseling or mentions of the GM adjusting anything based on the choice, but he may have felt that was already covered in the core rules.
re: threat rolls
The problem here is that the GM has lost a lever. Previously, if a player insisted on using the less-appropriate action, the GM can reduce effect (“you want to Skirmish when this is clearly Wreck? ok, but you’ll have reduced effect”, or in the extreme: “you want to Command when this is clearly Wreck? ok, it won’t have any effect though”). Now it sounds like the player has ultimate say in the action AND they always have standard effect, which kind of breaks the game at the edges.
Overall @justin your score for the mechanics section looks like this:
effects & consequences: “incredibly useful”
load: “also liked”
harm: bad, don’t use it
trauma: mixed/bad – could help certain campaigns, but as a default it waters down one of the system’s strengths
action: bad, don’t use it
downtime: mixed – some good bits, some watering down
Definitely looks like more bad than good, but it also sounds like there’s some value here in mining the first 2 sections? As someone who’s about to run Blades in a homebrew setting, the Doskvol material isn’t immediately useful (except for inspiration), but I’m left curious if the effects, consequences, and load sections might be super valuable.
I think your assessment is fair, but I personally disagree. For my group, the Threat Roll, Harm, and Devil’s Bargain changes have made our play more bombastic and thematically smoother. Admittedly, our group does primarily come from DnD-like games, but Deep Cuts doesn’t end up playing like DnD does at our table.
For one thing, my group was playing OG Blades a bit too safely. They wanted to avoid getting into trouble whenever possible, which makes sense when you’re putting yourself in the shoes of a criminal, but ultimately that took the form of balking at ‘optional’ endeavors in order to shrewdly and cleanly get the job done. It’s not the ‘wrong’ way to play Blades per se, but I felt like it was couching a bit of our potential fun.
Deep Cuts’ Threat & Devil’s Bargain systems spell out, explicitly, ‘if you want this you’re gonna need to jump for it.’ In the new system, my players who previously decided not to lockpick a wine cabinet in the basement of a fancy party to avoid raising any suspicion at all were now poisoning guards to knock them out, sprinting to do their objective and get back to give antidote before the clock runs out and the Crematorium bells toll.
I personally like the new Harm system more just because it’s more flavorful and a bit less punishing. A player can still end up being down-and-out for a while but it won’t take 3-6 downtime actions to nurse their level 2 harm away. To your point, it does disincentivize making multiple characters, but only a little bit. Death, retirement, and incarceration are still on the table.
I also appreciate Deep Cuts for not being an ‘all-or-nothing’ Blades 2.0 package. It says ‘hey, these rules are flexible, do what you want with them. Mix & match.’ While we ended up moving to the new rules pretty much entirely, there were a few we didn’t like and ended up hacking ourselves.
For instance, I personally hate one particular change to Stress & Vice, where you Overindulge for having 6+ Stress. In my opinion, we didn’t need another punishment for having ‘too much’ stress – we already had Trauma. My modified version has the players relieving 4 stress when they indulge their vice, with a *choice* to relieve all of it at the cost of an Overindulgence. It reinforces the trade-off system that Threat and Devil’s Bargains lean into in the rest of the book.
@Josh: I’d personally take:
– Effects & Consequence Table
– Load rules (for heavy items and score encumbrance)
– Debt
– Banks
– Heat guidelines
– Payoff guidelines (but probably drop the base pay to 2 or 4 Coin)
A bit confused here, effect hasn’t been removed from the threat roll. It’s on page 96 of Deep Cuts. It just says that you default to standard effect, which is the same way it works in normal Blades.
“Position and Effect are assumed to be risky/standard for threat rolls. You only need to evaluate other positions or effect levels as an option in special cases.”
And page 96:
“Effects and consequences are categorised into four levels of impact: limited, standard, great and extreme.”
Maybe the language is slightly stronger in recommending that you use Standard Effect as the default – and that’s giving people the impression that you can ONLY use standard effect, or that effect doesn’t exist? But it’s really just the same as basic Blades. Use Standard Effect normally, go to other effect levels if you need to.
@Payoff guidelines
The new guidelines that give more coin are definitely meant to be paired with the alternate advancement where crew upgrades cost coin instead of XP. Using one without the other will likely result in the crew being either coin starved or overly full. And of course if you do you’ll probably want to use the alternate crew advancement which slows down crew XP gain to better sync up the crew upgrades with the cohorts gained. (Some of these modules are less modular than others)
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