A Fistful of Darkness

A Fistful of Darkness is a Weird West TTRPG for groups who want the Blades in the Dark loop (pick a job, jump into the action, deal with the fallout, spend downtime) set in a frontier boomtown where a cursed mineral is pulling demons out of the ground and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are on their way. It suits groups who like building the town and its factions together and who are happy for the setting to get worse as the campaign goes on.

It is a poor fit for a historically grounded western, for groups who want a GM to arrive with a finished plot, or for tables who want tactical gunfights on a grid. The supernatural is everywhere, and the apocalypse clock only goes one way unless the posse works hard against it.

What the game is

A Fistful of Darkness is written and illustrated by Stefan Struck, who publishes as monkeyEcho on itch.io and as Tse Tse Worldwide Productions on DriveThruRPG. It is a hack of John Harper's Blades in the Dark and calls itself "Weird West Fantasy" with the stress on fantasy. The author says plainly that it is not a history lesson or a simulation of the period.

The default setting is Mudwater, a frontier town near a mine that dug too deep and found Bloodstone, now called Hellstone. Hellstone powers new machines, weapons and rituals, so everyone wants it. It also lets monsters, demons, spirits, mutants and the undead into the world, and the town's elders read it as the first sign of the end times. The players run a posse trying to climb to the top of that powder keg, and over the campaign they choose whether they side with Light or Darkness.

Publication history and editions

Struck worked on the game in public for several years before release. Roll20 character sheets were posted in 2018, the itch.io edition is dated March 26, 2020, and the DriveThruRPG listing went up on September 17, 2020. Those early versions (up to 1.4) were a hack in the strict sense: they covered what changed and sent you to the Blades in the Dark rulebook for the rest. Reviewers at the time pointed this out as the main drawback.

That changed on December 29, 2024, when the Full Game Edition came out. It folds in the Blades in the Dark SRD rules, adds pages and art, and no longer needs another book. Anyone who already owned the hack got the new PDF at no cost. Version 2.1 followed on March 29, 2025. A print-on-demand hardcover went on sale at Lulu in early March 2025 after a short delay. The author's site has mentioned Spanish and Russian translations planned for 2025; we could not confirm that either has been released.

Supplements

The one expansion so far is A Fistful of Darkness: The Companion, listed on DriveThruRPG on March 31, 2026 ($15 PDF, 157 pages). It needs the core book and adds ready-made Runs, monsters, spirits and demons, more artifacts, locations and factions, random tables, two new playbooks (the Wanderer and the Emberborn), optional rules for one-shots and Silver Bullets, a new Run mode called Flashpoint Runs, and an alternative campaign ending, the Fifth Rider. It addresses two common complaints about the core book: thin factions and the lack of prepared material.

What you need to play

One book covers everything. The PDF costs $18 on itch.io and DriveThruRPG (prices checked November 5, 2026). Either purchase includes the Full Game Edition 2.1 in single-page and spread layouts (about 250 pages), the older 1.4 hack PDF, separate cover files and character and posse sheets.

The Lulu hardcover (255 pages, 6 by 9 inches, $30) has a black-and-white interior, while the PDF uses some red, so print and PDF are not identical. Lulu does not pass buyer details to the author, so to get the free PDF that comes with the hardcover you email him a proof of purchase. You need ordinary six-sided dice, a handful for each player.

On itch.io the author also adds free community copies, one for each copy sold, for people who cannot afford the game.

Free extras and digital tools

A free, pay-what-you-want Extended Content pack collects table aids: progress clocks, a clock that tracks how many of the four Riders are active, blank NPC cards, Wonderdraft map tokens for drawing your own Mudwater, cards for the town's facilities, faction tokens and ink-friendly sheets.

For online play, the author maintains official Roll20 character sheets, built from the Blades in the Dark sheet, and a fan-made Google Sheets character keeper is linked from the itch.io page. The author has said he does not know of a Foundry VTT module, so Foundry users will need to adapt a Blades system themselves.

Core rules and play structure

Anyone who has played Blades in the Dark will know the engine. You roll a pool of six-sided dice, usually one to four, and read the highest: a 6 is a full success, a 4 or 5 is success with a cost, and 1 to 3 goes badly. Two 6s are a critical. The GM sets how risky and how effective an action is before the roll, and players choose which action fits their approach.

The twelve actions are renamed and retuned for the frontier. Sling covers shoot-outs, throwing a lasso or a blade, pickpocketing and handling a horse. Hunt covers tracking a target and precise long-range shots. Attune covers dealing with spirits, demons and the undead and channeling supernatural power. The others are Brawl, Command, Consort, Craft, Disable, Prowl, Read, Survey and Sway. The three resistance attributes are Wits, Prowess and Guts.

Play follows the Blades structure, with renamed parts. A job is a Run instead of a score. The posse picks a target and a plan, a single engagement roll drops everyone into the action, and flashbacks let players reveal preparations they made earlier. After the Run come payout, the posse's Doom and the Rider events that replace Blades' entanglements, and then downtime for healing, projects and vices.

Characters and posses

There are twelve character playbooks: the Fist (close-quarters fighter), the Shot (gunslinger and showman), the Law, the Gamble (manipulator and trickster), the Scout, the Outlaw, the Thunderheart (a "totem fighter born from the land"), the Speaker (spiritual guide and protector), the Plan (connected mastermind), the Gentle Touch (healer and empath), the Wrench & Saw (mad scientist obsessed with Hellstone) and a special one, the Revenant, a vengeful spirit in a dead body. Each has its own special abilities, gear, friends and rivals, and XP trigger.

The group also picks one of four posse types, each with its own abilities, upgrades and XP condition: Hellstone Scavengers (finding Hellstone and artifacts and holding claims), Outlaws (robberies, battles and jailbreaks), Bounty Hunters (bounties and treasure hunts) and the Tribe (hunts, raids and spiritual conquests). The posse type sets what kind of Run the table plays most.

Signature mechanics

• Grit instead of stress. Grit is a pool that runs down rather than a track that fills up. Pushing yourself costs 2 Grit, and resisting a consequence costs 6 Grit minus your highest die. Indulging your vice in downtime wins Grit back equal to your highest die, and gaining too much means you overindulge. Running low on Grit pushes a character toward Stigmata, the game's version of trauma.
• Hellstone. The mineral is treasure, fuel and a curse at once. Posses fight over claims and sell what they dig up, and close contact can cause Mutations.
• Doom. Doom replaces Heat, but it measures how much darkness the posse is bringing into the world, not how much the law is watching. Selling exploited Hellstone adds Doom. A posse upgrade for properly treated "Fine Hellstone" lets you sell without it.
• The four Riders. As Doom builds, the Riders of the Apocalypse (the white, red, black and pale horses) arrive one by one and feed into the rules for Rider events and the campaign's end game. A free clock in the Extended Content tracks how many are active.
• Ablass. Blades' stash is renamed Ablass, the German word for a church indulgence. When the posse advances, each character gains Ablass equal to the posse's Tier plus 2.
• Light or Darkness. Characters and posses side with Light or Darkness, and the game is built to find out which side wins the final fight.

Building Mudwater

Instead of a fixed map, the group builds its own version of Mudwater and the land around it in the first session, using a short set of questions. The book provides 24 factions to draw from, including railroads, a credit union, the Pony Express, the Inquisition, the First Church of Saint Michael, outlaw gangs, the Miners' Union, the Mother of Bones and the Black Rider. Players also create the contacts and relationships their characters already have, which hands some of the worldbuilding work to them. A DriveThruRPG reviewer suggests keeping the hex map loose: place a few locations at the start and let players fill gaps with rumors their characters have heard.

What play feels like

A session plays like an episode of a TV western: one or two main events, a few side threads, and a step forward in a longer story. The itch.io page lists the average session as a few hours. Fights are quick, cinematic exchanges of action rolls rather than turn-by-turn combat, and most of the tension comes from choosing which consequence to resist and how much Grit you can spare. Over a campaign the Doom track and the arrival of each Rider make the world feel like it is getting worse in a way the posse caused.

Running the game

The GM gives each NPC a clear want and a preferred method, presents opportunities and follows the consequences; there is no plot to prepare in advance. That makes session prep light, but the faction game needs care. One group that finished a campaign with the earlier hack edition reported that the default factions were thin on assets, turf and allies compared with Blades, and that the mostly business-minded factions did not grab their players, so the GM had to build new ones. The book encourages that.

The author's own advice is that the sweet spot is a GM and three or four players. Two players can work if they bring a lot to the story, and cohorts can fill gaps; more than four can slow the spotlight.

Campaign fit

This is a campaign game. Character and posse advancement, the faction clocks, Doom and the Riders all pay off over many sessions, and the end game assumes you get there. The core book has no one-shot procedure; the Companion adds optional one-shot rules and Flashpoint Runs, but a single session still skips most of what makes this game different from Blades.

Reception

Reception is warm but small. On DriveThruRPG (checked November 5, 2026) the PDF averages 4.7 from 21 ratings, with 15 five-star ratings and one three-star, and it holds a Gold best-seller medal. On itch.io it averages 4.8 from 66 ratings. It is listed among the Forged in the Dark games on the official Blades in the Dark site. We found no awards.

On r/bladesinthedark, Forged in the Dark players compare it to Scum and Villainy: it does for the Weird West what that game does for space opera, and Hellstone, Doom and the horsemen get the most praise. The same thread warns that Doom builds fast and is hard to keep down. An RPG Pub poster said it plays very much like Blades and that the playbooks feel distinct. The Hours Without Sleep blog (March 2021, reviewing the older hack edition) found the character, posse and world-building questions inspiring enough to mine for a Deadlands campaign.

Where it is strongest

• A complete Forged in the Dark game built for the Weird West, now in one book.
• Doom and the four Riders give a campaign a clear direction and an end.
• Hellstone ties money, power, magic and corruption into one resource the posse has to decide how to handle.
• Group-built Mudwater means every table's town is its own.
• A cheap PDF, a print option and free table aids.

Where it can frustrate groups

• Doom rises quickly; groups that expect to manage it like Blades' Heat can be caught out.
• Players of the earlier edition found the default factions thin, so plan to develop them.
• It is a single-author indie game with a small community, and the only prepared Runs are in the separate Companion.
• The print hardcover is black and white, and getting its PDF means emailing the author.
• No Foundry VTT support; Roll20 is the supported online option.

Content and safety notes

Expect gun violence, demons, undead, body-changing Mutations, greed and an end-of-the-world tone. The Thunderheart, the Speaker and the Tribe posse lean on Native American spiritual and "totem" tropes, and the default factions include a tribe and refugees. The Hours Without Sleep review noted that the game shares the usual problems of historical-western games in how it handles non-white characters, while finding it no worse than others. Talk about how your table wants to portray these groups, and what to leave out, before you start.

Best starting path

Buy the PDF from DriveThruRPG or itch.io and read the Full Game Edition 2.1, not the older 1.4 file. Grab the free Extended Content pack for the clocks and the Riders tracker. Add the Companion later if you want prepared Runs, more factions or the one-shot rules. If you are new to Forged in the Dark, play the first session as a short practice Run after building Mudwater, and agree early on how hard the posse will fight Doom. If you want more Weird West options, compare it with Weird Frontiers and the other games on our western TTRPGs page.

Research notes

Last checked November 5, 2026.

• DriveThruRPG: A Fistful of Darkness (price, files, page count, ratings, Human-Created Without AI label)
• itch.io: A Fistful of Darkness (playbooks, posses, mechanics list, devlog dates, ratings, author answers on player count and VTT)
• itch.io: A Fistful of Darkness Extended Content
• productivemonkey: A Fistful of Darkness (2020, 2024) (author's page: editions, hardcover, planned translations)
• DriveThruRPG: A Fistful of Darkness: The Companion (release date, contents)
• Lulu: Full Game Edition hardcover
• GitHub: official Roll20 character sheets (action, Grit, Doom, Ablass and posse terms)
• Blades in the Dark: Forged in the Dark games
• Hours Without Sleep: Impressions of a Fistful of Darkness (March 2, 2021)
• r/bladesinthedark: Has anyone played Fistful of Darkness? (July 2020)
• RPG Pub: A Fistful of Darkness