Scum & Villainy

If you haven't heard of Scum and Villainy, then you're in for a treat. Scum and Villainy is a Forged in the Dark space opera game. What does that all mean?

If you're familiar with D&D, then you would know that they use a d20 system. It's very popular and spawned other popular systems like Pathfinder that also use the d20 system. But, there are other systems that exist, a d6 system for example. Forged in the Dark is a d6 system created by the creators of Blades in the Dark, a very popular indie TTRPG. Scum and Villainy uses this system.

There are a lot of differences when comparing to D&D 5E. In fact, I would argue that it's unfair to compare because they're so fundamentally different. It's like comparing Dark Souls to Valorant. They're both games you can play on a PC, but they're different categories of video games. So, I'll instead highlight key system features that I think are super unique, with regards to Scum and Villainy because it's the only Forged in the Dark game I've played.

The first cool aspect is the it's a very cooperative storytelling game that I find missing in D&D. S&V is a fiction-first game where you, the player, set the scene and tell everyone else what's happening, and then we figure out the consequences based on the rolls. Sometimes, you don't know what ability or action to take until you fully describe what your character is doing. For the GM, you don't tell players what to do.

It really has a "play to find out" way of gaming. As my group has put it, you essentially play to find out what the consequences are. Anytime your character wants to do something, they will succeed to some extent. It's up to the GM and the dice rolls to see how bad the consequences are.

Honestly, after playing this game, I find it really hard to go back to playing D&D. The only downside I would say is that there's no game that uses Forged in the Dark with a high fantasy setting. You could argue that Blades in the Dark is high fantasy, but it's very grim and it's not what I'm looking for.