Interns In The Dark - A Modern-Day Forged in the Dark Game

Interns in the Dark is a satirical, modern-day table-top-role-playing game based on Blades in the Dark, where you play as interns who are assigned to a special project to steal valuable Intellectual Property (IP) from other companies.

It's always energizing playtesting this game with people and it's phenomenal seeing the creativity brought out through this game. Though it's still in the beginning stages, I look forward to playtest it even more.

This game is currently in development, with the logo made in Canva and everything else made with Google Docs. This game is designed to be a 10-week-long internship so it's a quick breather of a campaign before you get back into playing elves and dwarves and stuff. The rules document is fully playable, but most of the rules that it shares with Blades in the Dark are generalized. It's helpful to have played Blades before, but you can also familiarize yourself with the core rules on the Blades SRD.  

Changes to Interns in the Dark from 0.2 to 0.3

Character Sheets for Online Play

Company Sheets for Online Play

Mechanical Changes

After playtesting a few times at conventions and with friends, I’ve noticed a few mechanics that bring a bit of friction to knowing how to play the game. The design for Interns is to be “easier” than Blades in the Dark but still be challenging and creative. Therefore, I’ve made a few mechanical changes that simplify a few mechanics, as well as emphasize some of the narrative tool mechanics to give the characters more depth. I’ll be doing a long-term playtest in the coming month to validate this.

Player Sheet

-          Resistance is now in the form of a token that a player can use to reduce or negate a consequence. The token is based on how many X’s are filled on the left side of the action bar. Resistance Tokens are separated into three categories: Grit, Wit and Confidence and can be recovered through certain skills and a new downtime activity, Staying In.

-          Load is changed into 3 free items then every item is an additional stress. I always get stressed out when I carry extra snacks to the movie theater.

-          Proficiency is changed to Expertise mainly to separate it from DnD. CBR+PNK and other FiTD seem to use this language but functionally it’s the same. Emphasized it more and made the boxes bigger, and added in character creation, that characters can choose an expertise.

-          Experience is completely overhauled into a more fictional experience. Each character sheet has a Career track and an Exploration track (because as an intern, that’s kind of the point of the internship). The Career track represents an ambitious, some would say toxic growth while the Exploration track allows you to perhaps find yourself. The tracks have certain motifs that allows the player to push to develop your character. On the second sheet, you can mark what you focused on and at the end of the game, tally it up to decide the ultimate fate of your intern

-          Changed a few item languages. Weapon to object, or something less violent. They can fictionally still be weapons, or be something else.

-          Introduced a new teamwork mechanic: Tag-Team where you partner up with a player to perform a unique scene by adding your effect points. Inspired by that Simpson Arcade game and an episode of Dungeons and Daddies.

Company Sheet

-          Cohort section replaced with Company Asset, in which each company controls a very valuable asset that the player can grant access to. In the beginning of the game, you have access to just one company asset and one company ability

-          Turf chart replaced with Org Chart, a hierarchical map in which players can choose to climb the ladder.

-          Change Connections into Your Supervisor to give a character the GM can play at the start of the game

The Quick Play and Long Term Play document are changed to represent the changing mechanics of the game. Some other visual errors are also fixed (hopefully)

Next step: I’m practicing Affinity and will be designing and putting in place a sort of user manual to get more specific in the actions, world and stuff.

Thank you all who've been looking at this game and supporting it!