A little bit toolbox, a little bit house rules: Blades in the Dark’s John Harper explains his return to Doskvol
Deep Cuts condenses seven years of Harper’s own experience with his most influential tabletop RPG
John Harper doesn’t really do sequels or expansions. The tabletop RPG designer best known for Blades in the Dark—but also responsible for AGON, Lady Blackbird, and the eminently hackable Lasers & Feelings—prefers for his creations to arrive in players’ hands fully formed. No second editions, no balance patches; Harper wants each book to represent everything you need to understand his intent and just play the damn thing.
Which makes the recently released Deep Cuts supplement an odd outlier.
Across nearly 150 pages, Deep Cuts collects a trove of modular additions to Blades’ original text in the form of new factions, technological innovations, player and crew choices—and a narrative catalyst meant to lurch the industrial city of Doskvol and its haunted, magitech world into a new era of revelations, secrets, and perils. Harper also includes six modified or overhauled systems that groups can opt to plug into any Blades campaign to better suit the table’s ambitions.
Talking to Rascal in a recent interview, Harper specified that Deep Cuts does not represent a second edition to Blades in the Dark. His original book, published seven years ago in collaboration with Evil Hat Games, remains the intended core play experience. But, as he explains in the interview below, he has also been constantly running and taking part in campaigns, interacting with the online community, and watching actual play series use Blades as its storytelling engine. He’s had ideas, maybe even good ones, and they needed to go somewhere.
Deep Cuts is a convenient accumulation of Harper’s design thoughts—complete with commentary at the end—but also perhaps a resource for other creators. It marks the game’s progress through the tabletop industry as Forged in the Dark claims a seat next to “Powered by the Apocalypse” as design lineage shorthand. It gives players permission to augment their sessions, if such a thing was ever necessary. Harper doesn’t believe Deep Cuts needs to be anything other than interesting to the right crowd—but it’s definitely not a second edition.
This interview has been slightly edited for clarity and space.
