Forging Beyond: Creating Non-Standard Forged in the Dark Games

Not every hack of Blades in the Dark is going to look like a variation of Blades in a new setting. This panel takes a look at several Forged in the Dark games (Girl by Moonlight, HEIST: Get Rich Or Die Trying, and Soundclash), how they're like Blades, where they differ, and how we got there as game designers.

• Allie Bustion (she/they) is a Black queer femme game designer and writer with a deep love of video games, pro wrestling, mechanical keyboards, and pop culture and analysis. Their work has ranged from companies like Paizo and Wizards of the Coast to Kickstarters like Thirsty Sword Lesbians and Unfettered Hexes to games they really need to finish around all this freelancing like HEIST and Misbehavin'. More of their work can be found on Patreon, itch.io, and their site. Catch them chattering about pro wrestling and esports with pictures of their cat on Twitter.


• Andrew Gillis (they/them) is an RPG designer, and writer. They are currently working on Girl by Moonlight (which is being published by Evil Hat), as well as some other secret projects. Their work focuses on queer themes, modular designs, and fiddly systems. Follow them on Twitter @commutingcrow for updates.


• Brandon O’Brien (he/they) is a writer, performance poet, teaching artist and game designer from Trinidad and Tobago. His fiction and poetry appears in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Reckoning, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, as well as in tie-in fiction for Blue Rose, Pathfinder, Starfinder, and Magic: The Gathering. He is also the former Poetry editor of FIYAH Magazine. He is currently working on Soundclash, a Forged in the Dark game of music, magic, and raging against the machine. You can find him on Twitter @therisingtithes.