Systems & Characters
How to Make a Character for Blades in the Dark
A Blades in the Dark scoundrel takes fifteen minutes: pick one of seven playbooks, dot a few action ratings, choose your heritage, background, and vice, and mark a friend and a rival. Then the real creation happens: the whole table builds the crew together, and that shared sheet will matter more than yours. This guide covers both, in the order the book intends.
Pick a playbook
Seven scoundrels, each a complete archetype with special abilities and a reputation:
| Playbook | The fantasy |
|---|---|
| Cutter | Violence, applied conversationally |
| Hound | Tracker and sharpshooter, half detective |
| Leech | Alchemist-tinkerer; the one with the vials |
| Lurk | The classic cat burglar |
| Slide | Grifter, face, professional liar |
| Spider | The planner with threads everywhere |
| Whisper | Talks to ghosts. On purpose. |
Pick the poster you'd want on your wall. Playbooks in this game are starting points, not cages; any scoundrel can attempt anything, and you can even swap playbooks later if the fiction earns it. Take one special ability to start (the first listed is always a safe classic), and resist reading all seven playbooks' abilities tonight. You will anyway.
Dot your actions
Twelve actions (Skirmish, Prowl, Consort, Study, and so on) sit under three attributes: Insight, Prowess, Resolve. Your playbook pre-fills a couple of dots; you add a few more, max two in anything at creation.
Blades wisdom worth stealing: don't spread evenly. A specialist with zero in half the list generates better fiction than a generalist, because zero-dot desperation rolls are where devils' bargains live. And your attribute totals set your resistance rolls, so even "useless" dots quietly protect you. The math is shallow on purpose; ten minutes covers it.
Heritage, background, vice, and the two names
Heritage and background are one-word origins (Iruvian, noble, dockworker) that exist to be invoked for fictional permission: a former dockworker just knows the wharf gangs. Cheap words, constant payoff.
Your vice is load-bearing though: gambling, pleasure, obligation, weird occult hobbies. Indulging it is how you clear stress between scores, and overindulging it is how downtime goes sideways. Pick a vice you want scenes about, because the system guarantees you'll get them.
Last, name a friend and a rival from your playbook's list of NPCs. Congratulations: you just handed the GM two episodes of television. This is the same trick as Edge's Obligation, miniaturized.
Then the table builds the crew (the important part)
Character done, the group picks a crew type together: Shadows (thieves), Bravos (muscle), Hawkers (dealers), Smugglers, Assassins, or a Cult. That choice sets what scores you hunt, which factions care about you, and what your campaign is about, which is why it outranks any individual sheet. Argue about it properly; this is the true session zero decision.
Then assign the crew's starting reputation, lair, and upgrades, and mark which faction you've already annoyed (you start at war with someone; it's that kind of city). Twenty minutes of group decisions and Doskvol already has opinions about you. Everything after that is scores and consequences, which is to say: the game.
Frequently asked questions
How long does Blades in the Dark character creation take?
Fifteen minutes for a scoundrel, plus twenty or so for the group's crew creation, which doubles as session zero. Whole table, zero to first score: under an hour.
What's the best playbook for a new player?
Cutter and Lurk have the most self-explanatory jobs; the Slide suits natural talkers. The Whisper carries the most setting weight (ghosts get complicated) and rewards a player who wants the spooky deep end. None of them are mechanically tricky.
What does the vice do mechanically?
Indulging your vice in downtime clears stress, the resource everything else burns. Overindulge (roll too well, ironically) and you cause trouble: debts, entanglements, waking up somewhere strategic. It's a pressure valve with a plot dispenser attached.
Do characters share advancement with the crew?
Both advance separately: your scoundrel gains abilities while the crew gains tier, turf, and upgrades everyone benefits from. Tables quickly learn the crew sheet is the real character, and spending toward it first is the veteran move.
Can I change playbooks later?
Yes, with GM blessing when the fiction supports it; the sheet is a lens, not a class. More common is staying put and going deeper, since seven or eight special abilities in, every playbook gets weird in the best way.