Blades in the Dark is one of my favorite fantasy roleplaying games. The system is exceptional, and this scifi adaptation doesn't vary far from the core. What you get is a tightly tuned and evocative game about scoundrels on the rim of space, in the vein of Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Killjoys, Mass Effect, and of course the Mos Eisley cantina.


KILLJOYS: My favorite underappreciated scifi show.

Scum & Villany comes with seven character classes that cover the usual crew, from Mechanics and Pilots to Mystics and Doctors. The clever bit is that your ship is like a character itself, covering much the same area as your gang did in Blades. The Stardancer is a light freighter specializing in smuggling jobs; the Cerberus is a swift hunter for retrieval of difficult people and artifacts; and the Firedrake is a bruiser of a corvette that can take the fight to the corrupt Hegemony. The rest of the system is pretty much the same as Blades, with three exceptions: The action list has been rejiggered to be appropriate for scifi; character action ratings (think skills) are limited to a max of three instead of four; and Gambits are a new meta-currency that can add dice or an effect increase to a roll, and are recharged on a six or crit on a risky action.

The setting is an eminently gameable mashup of things you've seen before. There's an oppressive and corrupt Hegemony, with many officious factions in opposition all declaring what can't be done, and a spectrum of outlaw groups doing it anyway. Moderate magitech is an integral part of the setting, with Precursor artifacts enabling travel along hyperspace lanes, semi-sentient AI, and other effects. The mystical Way and the Precursors are fortunately less overbearing than Blades ghost field, and can be mapped to your choice of spooky unknown effects in fiction, from The Force in Star Wars to Mass Effect biotics or River Tam's psychic abilities. It'd be hard to remove entirely, so this system may not be suited for rock hard scifi.

Compared to Blades, I think the downtime sections are a little more streamlined, and the setting is a hell of a lot more gameable, or at least it is with my taste in fiction. I have some quibbles with the economy, and the lack of a 'last score' mechanic, but this is a great game, and a solid goto for science fiction.