Q&A With Blades '68 Designer on Exploring Bond Era Antics in Duskvol

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This week, we’re going to focus on an interview instead of our little news roundups. I got to speak with Tim Denee, the designer behind Evil Hat’s Blades '68, the latest update to the BLADES IN THE DARK series. The book is the first version to try and expand John Harper’s game-changing BITD game, which helped introduce the world to the FORGED IN THE DARK system. While BITD was initially a Steampunk-inspired setting laden with its deep Dishonored-esque lore, Blades '68 explores that same work in the future, albeit with more of a JAMES BOND/DEATHLOOP aesthetic. The art alone was enough to excite me.

We still have your weekly news roundup attached here as well. But it’s primarily an interview. So enjoy!

Q&A With Blades '68 Designer Tim Denee

1. What's the story that led to the creation of Blades ‘68?

It started as a passion project - a bit of playing Deathloop (itself a '60s update of the Dishonored setting), combined with my own lifelong interest in the 1960s as a decade, and my long history with Blades in the Dark (making things like my detailed street maps). The idea of a 1960s version of the Blades in the Dark setting was so immediately compelling to me, I knew I had to do it. It simply had to happen. 

Initially the idea was to make the project as small as possible and release it as a free, unofficial, bootleg PDF. Then the previews I shared generated a lot of buzz, and so it went from a small-scope PDF for my own home game to an official book published by Evil Hat Productions. 

2. Why do you think Blades' rules and setting transfer well into the 60s/70s-influenced storytelling that you are embracing with this game?

I think the 1960s have just the right balance of echoing, but also contrasting, the 19th century industrial feel of the original game. 

By echoing, I mean that there are a bunch of 1960s touchstones that feel right at home with the grimy crime stories that Blades captures so well. I'm thinking basically any crime movie with Michael Caine, and also London in the 60s generally - the Kray twins, dark alleyways, daring heists. It all feels very Blades to me. I also think that in the same way that the 19th century is a turning point between two worlds (from the pre-industrial, superstitious, magical to the post-industrial, mechanical, scientific), the 1960s are a turning point into the modern world as we know it (modern music, advertising, capitalism, politics). 

But I think that to echo and rhyme is not enough - what makes the idea compelling is also the contrast. The startling differences. It's taking a familiar setting and showing it in a whole new light (literally). The 1960s are a great contrast to the gaslamp industrial time period in several ways - the vibrancy, the colour, the explosion of fashion and music and political activism. Part of what makes 1960s London so compelling, in the real world, is its contrast with the gloomy old Victorian London that we're all familiar with. And that contrast works just as well with Doskvol. 

3. How did you try to capture the energy of BITD while also bringing new life to this version of the game? What sorts of mechanical changes did you have to consider or embrace? 

Again, the idea was to both echo but also contrast. The crew types are very similar to original Blades, and so is the core gameplay. You'll have heists and chases and assassinations and all that good stuff. That should all feel quite familiar. 

The tone, however, is slightly lighter; hectic criminal escapades. A bit less grim and gritty, a bit less pulling yourself up from nothing. The crew starts with more advantages, and being Tier 0 is less of a slog. There are also new resistance rules, harm rules, and armor rules that all add up to make the player characters substantially tougher and better able to handle jumping out of a window, driving a car off a bridge, and so on. You can go faster and harder and still shrug it off.

It's also all designed to be very modular, in keeping with Deep Cuts. You can swap in original Blades rules modules if you prefer those, and you can also sub in Deep Cuts modules.

4. What was the most interesting or exciting bit of lore to be transferred from the current version of BITD to now?

In the original Blades, there's this subtle plot line that the Leviathans are migrating away, and eventually, there will be no more Leviathan blood. Civilization runs on Leviathan blood as a fuel source, and most importantly, it powers the lightning barriers that protect the city. What happens 100 years from now? 

The answer in Blades '68 is Electroplasmic Fusion. Leviathan blood is refined into electroplasm, but human ghosts are also electroplasmic. In the original Blades, dead bodies are destroyed at an official crematorium to prevent the soul rising from the body as a ghost. By the '60s, scientists have figured out how to use that process as a fuel source - not just destroying the soul of the dead, but using it as a fuel source. Now they don't need leviathan blood, because there are always more dead bodies.

This is kind of the foundational bit of lore for the whole of Blades '68. Electroplasmic fusion powers the bubble, which protects the city, and the bubble provides Bluetime (the hyper-saturated fake daytime that has replaced the eternal night). It shapes every aspect of life in Doskvol 68. 

5. What sort of art aesthetics did you want to elaborate on with this?

To return to the theme of echoing and contrasting, I wanted the graphic design to be very familiar and strongly related to the original Blades. It uses a similar layout on the page, type hierarchies, page numbering, and more. But then also, to provide a strong contrast, it uses a wide palette of bright colours (contrasted with original Blades, which is greyscale), and bold, poppy illustrations. I wanted an aesthetic that reaches out and grabs you, that feels vibrant and exciting. 1960s, yes, but a modern take on that; not yellowed and distressed, but sharp and clear.

6. Does the existence of Blades '68 imply that there may be future explorations of other time periods in that same world/setting later? Or is that above your paygrade?

That's above my paygrade, but I know that Dagger Isles is well along the path to release, so there is at least one more Blades expansion coming soon! I'm not involved, but very excited to see it. 

7. Is Blades '68 aimed at veteran BITD players, or at new players looking to try the game with a fresh vibe?

This is a lazy answer, but the answer is really both. 

On the one hand, I made this game for myself, and I have played a bunch of original Blades. This game is a love letter to that one, and I think veteran players will get a lot out of it. There are all sorts of nods and easter eggs and things to enjoy for the veteran Blades players.

On the other hand, I know that there are people out there who want to try Blades but, for whatever reason, 19th-century industrial fantasy just doesn't hit for them. So I think for those people, this is a great way to get a taste of Blades in the Dark, but in a whole new flavour that might be more up their alley.

8.  What is something you're most excited about from this project? What do you hope players will most enjoy from this project?

The thing that really excites me about Blades '68 is when it links through to original Blades. I'm excited to hear about people playing sequel campaigns, where they revisit the setting but populate it with the after-effects and descendant characters from an old Blades campaign. Or time travel campaigns, where you jump back and forth from Blades '68 to original Blades. Or alternate timeline campaigns, where you take beloved Blades PCs and play "what if they were alive in the 1960s instead". 

There are so many ways for Blades '68 to connect up to original Blades, and I can't wait to hear what people do with that. 

In my home campaign (55 sessions), the same group had played a Blades in the Dark campaign about five years ago. Halfway through our Blades '68 campaign, we did a flashback session, playing original Blades again with those old characters. It was revealed that the '68 antagonist they had been dealing with was an old foe of their old crew, now turned into a vampire. It was just so much fun to revive those old characters for a session, and link them through to this brand new campaign. It was an all-time great gaming moment. 

Thanks to Denee for chatting with TTRPG Insider. You can back the campaign now on Backerkit.

Seamus Conneely, aka one half of Cannibal Halfling Gaming, published a piece that went a bit viral on BlueSky, elaborating on what they describe as the five tiers of TTRPG publishers. It ranges from the hundreds-of-million-dollar brand D&D to smaller publishers like Evil Hat and Steve Jackson Games. Most companies in this space don’t disclose their finances for a variety of reasons, so we only know so much about how much publishers actually make. Still, I think this is a really helpful look at the spectrum of profit that companies in the TTRPG space have and how big it really is.

To quote J Gray of R.Talsorian Games:

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