Indie TTRPG of the Week

Songs for the Dusk, Rebuilding a better world

Songs for the Dusk

Hope you like flower motifs!

Touchstones: On a sunbeam, Dream Askew, She-Ra, Destiny, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon are cited as touchstones on its page

Genre: Post apocalyptic

What is this game?: Songs for the dusk is a game about rebuilding society after the collapse of capitalism

How's the gameplay?: SftD is FITD, roll many dice and take the highest, and is overall a very similar system to the original blades, albeit with some core differences, Crews instead of representing your gang's reasoning for their crimes, represent your methods in how to rebuild community, characters can heal scars, vices are instead Beliefs, what your character thinks their ties to the community is, and so on. Songs for the dusk is one of the few games that I think truly gets the strengths of the original Blades in the Dark, and uses it to its advantage

What's the setting (If any) like?: Songs for the Dusk's setting is a glowing pastel post-apocalypse, things might feel dire, but in reality they're getting better due to good people trying their best to fix the world, some groups try to grapple onto idealizations of the old-world, while some try to rebuild even better than before

What's the tone?: Overwhelmingly hopeful, the world is healing, people are inherently good, and kindness is always rewarded

Session length: 2-3 hours, SFTD has some complexities but its overall pretty dang simple

Number of Players: 3-5 works best

Malleability: SFTD has some info on how to change the setting to whatever you'd like, but in my opinion the base setting is malleable and vague enough to have some fun in

Resources: As a very recent release, SFTD doesn't have many resources, at least as of right now

Songs for the Dusk is a game I could talk about a lot if we're just talking about tone, setting, and writing a very interesting world, but wouldn't have much to say in the gameplay department other than "It's good", it really is just simple done well

Resources:

Closing Thoughts