Scum and Villainy

Excellent system for pulpy and cinematic sci-fi adventures in the style of shows like Mandalorian, Rebels, Firefly and Cowboy Bebop. In fact, you can easily adapt the game to any of the settings mentioned above! The game focuses on adventures of a less-than-fortunate crew of a spaceship, who can choose to be primarily Rebels, Smugglers or Bounty Hunters. Will you rise to the top of the most wanted list? Will you be able to leave a dent in the tyrannical rule of the oppressive system? Or will you come crashing down? We play to find out!

Looking to play in a Star Wars-type world? How about Firefly? Well, if you like fast-moving action that mixes Blades in the Darks' style of play with pulpy action, it's hard to beat Scum and Villainy. Since it uses the Forged in the Dark mechanics, it's quick to put together PCs and get playing. And the rules are cleaner and clearer than Blades in the Dark, making it easier to pick up for Game Masters.

Scum and Villainy (and the underlying Forged in the Dark System) excels at marrying scenes of narrative heft with nailbiting gameplay choices. Story is a consequence of gameplay as much as gameplay is a consequence of story. While much of that has to be resolved in metatextual/above-game conversations, it's all at the behest of arriving to the next thrilling moment as meaningfullly and efficiently as possible. What could take an entire arc of 4-5 sessions in other more "immersive" or "GM led" RPGs, Scum can resolve within a job, if not a single action. Be prepared to face heavy stakes often, and of your own (deliberate) making. Regardless of the narrative scenario you're in, the elegant Position/Effect system - which allows players to "tailor their poison" in exchange for anyhing from better action outcomes, to XP, to Cred, to Assets, and beyond - allows GMs and even players themselves to award their daring and bravado with worthy rewards, both in failure and success. This in turn allows the whole table to think of bigger and broader strokes versus traditional RPGs' moment to moment progressions. In that sense, Scum and Villainy might be too much of a "writer's room" experience for certain players - where you will be going over the details of your story as much as you might roleplay through them. However, what time you lose in immersive roleplay, the whole table gains in collaborative story-crafting. This is truly an all hands on deck system and as long as you're onboard with what this game offers, you and your crew will end up creating a truly unique and memorable time each and every session!

Scum and Villainy is a variant of the Blades in the Dark system utilizing many of the same rules, but adding options to shift the game towards a science fiction style. This game utilizes shows like Firefly, Stargate, Star Trek, and Star Wars as bits of inspiration. With players able to pick playbooks to determine their specialties, they’ll be able to cover a number of different roles. The playbooks are made to feel special in what they do, and each usually contains examples of characters or styles that would fit what they do. This makes it much easier to visualize the kind of character you want to play. Introducing ‘The Way’ as a cosmic force that is present throughout the people and places of this setting allows you to play around with other forces that exist in science fiction if you wanted to shift the game to a different setting than the one provided. This game lives up to its name encouraging a Players vs the Galaxy style that blends the lines of right, wrong, convenient, and dangerous. The system uses the d6 to determine levels of failure and success allowing one to critically fail, fail, succeed with consequences, and fully succeed during any number of scores. The Game Master typically isn’t responsible for rolling dice, but instead focuses on providing consequences for the results of what a player is doing. One of the best ways to separate this system from others as well as to set up what sort of game you are running is the ship. Every crew chooses a ship as part of character creation. The style of ship grants mechanical benefits to the party and levels up the same way as characters would. Whether you pick a ship focused on exploring new worlds, running blockades, or infiltrating off limit facilities, you will find a number of options and abilities to keep your crew flying… at least until the next score. For Game Masters, this game allows you to flex your narrative muscles. Like many other games utilizing this style of dice rolling, your job becomes describing consequences rather than having to determine the specific actions of the world around them. The lore of the system is actually pretty solid, and it gives hooks for the planets and locations creating a mechanic for wanted levels depending on which area your crew are currently present. The factions also add to the potential of inspiration for the creation of your own stories with information about their outlooks, goals, and secrets to determine which ones might interest the players to help or might be interested in permanently taking your players out of the sky. I would suggest this to anyone that enjoys story heavy science fiction stories that have the players forming strong connections with each other and allies in a story that encourages bold choices and morally questionable characters.