By Rookery Publications
Art by Mark Gibbons
In addition to being game developers, Rookery Publications presents Inside The Rookery, a live podcast featuring guests from across the games industry. ITR (as the cool kids call it) takes deep dives into the process of designing and developing your favourite games. With Dark Deeds magnificent second edition poised to leap from the shadows ITR’s host (and the game’s proofreader) Lindsay Law cornered the miscreants responsible, Mark Gibbons and Andy Law, to scrutinise the roleplaying possibilities offered by the game’s ‘grimsical’ setting.
The interrogation was recorded and amidst all the inane chatter, nuggets of gaming gold were unearthed.
The following is carefully sliced and diced from that recording with a fine stiletto.
Could you use Dark Deeds as a game within a roleplay game?
Mark Gibbons: After we published the game's first edition, I did an interview at the GAMA Trade Show. The interviewer told me that he was using Dark Deeds as an icebreaker with his D&D group.
When they arrived at a new location, they would play a Dark Deeds game rather than the traditional tavern brawl. He would have the players contracted by the Patron, the ultimate character you're trying to curry favour within the game. They would have a mission or series of little subplots and play through a game of Dark Deeds to establish who got the most experience points at the end of it. It’s a fun ‘animosity generator’ within a party. If you have a party that has those interesting tensions, Dark Deeds is a great way to bring them to the fore for a GM. You could also use them to resolve some issues you are having as a party, otherwise they just stay simmering under the surface. When one of your supposed friends steals your +3 Master Sword, how do you react?
Lindsay Law: Well, that’s just rude! What about you, Andy?
Andy Law: I roleplay a lot. It’s one of the great joys of my life: getting together with cool people, telling stories, and having fun. Dark Deeds has a clear tone: it’s dark, humorous, and genuinely hilarious when you play it. For RPGs that use levity to offset darkness, you can use its humour to establish the tone your players can expect.
LL: How do you intend to use it?
AL: I intend to use Dark Deeds in two different ways. First, I’ll use it as an in-game artefact. It can fit the tones and themes of many fantasy games and most worlds have games in them. You can Inception it just a little bit and have your PCs play the game. There is something exceedingly fun about getting PCs you know well to play a real-world game. It’s not something they would normally do. They're usually kicking in goblins or hiking across the mountains and getting attacked by harpies or something. But, no, they're around a table backstabbing the living crap out of each other playing Dark Deeds. It's just freaking hilarious. I cannot express how much fun that is.
If you're doing a different style of game, you could use it as an internal mini-game to see how well your players do. For example, if you're doing a gang warfare game you can use the Dark Deed cards to help establish what your next set of missions are. Then you could build on that to a bigger story you're playing within that realm.
LL: I think the tone would fit Modiphius’s upcoming Discworld Adventures RPG setting. I can imagine many of the Guard cards patrolling in that world.
MG: I was channelling a bit of Pratchett when I drew the art for a few of the cards, for sure! Some of the characters have that Ankh Morporkian flavour!
LL: The nemeses are fun archetypes. A GM could randomise who the players will encounter as the political players in the town they have just arrived in. It’s an interesting way to do random generation rather than creating another character from your imagination as a GM.
MG: Absolutely, you could also use the Street Deck as a random encounter generator.
Do you roleplay when playing Dark Deeds?
MG: The first time I played the game was after it was completed. I joined the first edition team with pretty short notice. I got stuck into the art and the first time I saw it it was hot off the presses for GAMA. The night before GAMA, I had a couple of friends around to play. We got some pizza and beer in, and it was amazing. Immediately they started pulling their hoodies up and roleplaying as they became these minions, backstabbing each other. It was a real delight to watch because it happened unbidden.
AL: I've played the game many times with a mixture of players and people can’t seem to help themselves! After a few goes they’re cackling about something they’ve done or howling about something done to them. They get very engaged, not in an ‘I’m angry’ way but more in a ‘I can't believe it turned out like that’ way. The game generates some ridiculous outcomes that encourage people to laugh at themselves. It’s funny and engaging in a way that I have found few other games of this ilk manage to be.
I‘ve played it with people who were quite stoic by nature, but they were just as involved by the end of it because Dark Deeds just draws it out of you. It’s a good icebreaker for board gamers to move into a more character-driven style game. So, if you have a group of friends that you think would like a roleplaying game, Dark Deeds is a fine bridge because it’s a game that, naturally, starts getting you to interact with other players.
LL: How would you add Dark Deeds to an existing roleplaying setting?
AL: I would always ask: what’s the goal of adding it to my game? If you are playing a game that’s high fantasy already, like D&D, Dark Deeds fits in perfectly.
LL: I agree, high fantasy worlds have things that have never really existed, like Thieves’ Guilds and Assassins’ Guilds. That really lends itself to playing a game like this. You could use Dark Deeds to represent the tasks that the player is asked to do to join one of the Guilds. They might be in competition with the other players, with the escalating Nemeses lining up to take them down as they become more infamous.
AL: Yeah, say you have a dark fantasy world, there are going to be things you can port over wholesale. If you are playing a more grounded game it can also be used as a good contrast of tone to everything you are doing.
Also, looking at the mechanics it offers, I think it is a great tool as a mini-game to represent something the core rules don’t do. I would use it to represent guilds or cults making their way through the town. But I wouldn’t just use it to have a fun game, I would use it to resolve say, an entire piece of street or social warfare campaign being run by one of these groups over a week or a month, so that we could see the result in a single play-through of the mini-game, in this case Dark Deeds. You could do this with a few mods, for example, playing a group like the Thieves’ Guild instead of just playing a nameless minion.
You could rename Favour so it represents political points being accrued by the players of each faction. With only one or two renames you can use it to represent your city. The outcome of Dark Deeds could show how your city’s politics shift over the course of the week or month. It’s a good idea to have your players playing a faction they identify with. The GM can play a faction that everyone hates! The players can decide whether to go for their own glory or gang up together for the best outcome. You can then go straight back into roleplaying.
MG: Yeah, for instance if one of your players is a Cleric, then they might take different actions, like any time a Cleric is under threat they might step in.
LL: The last time I played I targeted the other players rather than going for Citizens or for stealing Loot. In my head I was playing a Robin Hood-type figure, so if you are using it as a GM you could introduce these limitations or rules for the style of play that each guild takes. You could set some Dark Deeds missions that are secondary objectives that your players might not know about, which would introduce further complexity to make it more interesting for everyone.
AL: Because Dark Deeds isn’t closely tied to a setting it’s easy to use it in your own game through only small changes of language. It’s the easiest thing to make tiny adaptations so that people can play a game, with simple mechanics they understand, but with small tweaks to make the game fresh and new. If stakes are added, which roleplaying does, it changes the game and changes the way you engage with it. People start to play in ways they never played before! I had fun in the playtesting because Mark had a singular vision for the experience he wanted people to have when they were playing it. So, sometimes we had to take a trip to Mathstown to do the balancing.
MG: I did not enjoy my trips to Mathstown. I knew I had to go there, but I didn’t want to hang out there.
LL: How would you integrate Dark Deeds into a very lawful group?
MG: They could play the City Watch? They could set themselves up as Defenders of the Street, Protectors of the Citizenry, and spin the game on its head. That might take a little more work to change the mechanics.
AL: I would use language and a special rule.Your rule for City Watch would be you don’t need to sneak past the Guards, but you can’t attack them either. If you are playing the Nemeses, you’d play the game in the same way, but instead of attacking the Nemeses you would be “putting them into protection”.
MG: The Nemeses are quite grey characters anyway, the Patron wants them done away with because they are rivals or impediments to ultimate domination. They are not necessarily good people, and some of the citizens are potentially shady. I’m sure as a Lawful group you could find a way to do righteous work.
LL: You could flip it around and say: the Nemeses are corrupt, the Watch is corrupt, in fact, this whole city is worshipping some heinous deity and the party is actually cleansing the place in righteous fury!
AL: So that would resolve it with only a small change in language. Instead of the Patron, you’d be working for some angelic entity, and whoever got the most favour would have done the most work in cleansing the city.
So, more Delightful Deeds than Dark Deeds? We think we prefer the original sinister intent! And we think you will, too!
Indeed, why not find out yourself? Dark Deeds is available to buy now:
And if you want to keep up-to-date on all the latest news concerning our game of malicious minions, including future blog posts like this, you can subscribe to the mailing list here. You can also uncover more about Dark Deeds at Rookery Publications’ website. Share your excitement for the game on social media using the hashtag #DarkDeedsGame to connect with fellow minions in the service of our confoundingly complex Patron worldwide!