Mar de Oro for Blades in the Dark

Conversion status

D&D 5e remains the most extensively tested Mar de Oro implementation. This page presents the Blades in the Dark v8.2 adaptation and should be treated as guidance rather than a playtested conversion. Stress and Trauma are native mechanics in Blades in the Dark. Mar de Oro Bonds and Burdens require deliberate translation into Blades relationships, pressures, obligations, advancement triggers, clocks, and consequences.

System-agnostic table procedures (Hard Calls at the Table and Running the Powered Arts) live in the System-Agnostic Adaptation chapter because they apply across multiple rulesets.

Bonds

Translate a Mar de Oro Bond into one or more relationships or commitments that regularly influence play. Possible expressions include a close friend or trusted contact, a crew relationship, loyalty to a faction or institution, a promise or oath, a dependant, a shared crew goal, a character belief or drive, a character or crew experience trigger, or a source of assistance, access, or obligation.

A Bond does not need a separate numerical track. It should matter through fictional permission, difficult choices, faction status, contacts, experience triggers, Devil's Bargains, and consequences. Bonds are not Stress, Trauma, or Vice.

Burdens

Translate a Burden according to what it actually does in the fiction. Possible expressions include an obligation, a debt, a rival, a hostile faction, a dangerous secret, a dependant, an oath, Vice pressure, harm, reduced faction status, a recurring complication, a four-, six-, or eight-segment clock, or a Trauma condition only where an existing Trauma description genuinely fits.

Do not automatically assign Trauma when a character has a Burden. In Blades in the Dark, Trauma normally occurs when a character fills their Stress track. Trauma conditions are permanent and have their own mechanical consequences. Do not invent additional Trauma conditions as though they were part of the core rules.

Playbook Starting Points

A Mar de Oro Calling does not determine a Blades playbook. Playbooks represent a character's preferred methods, reputation, special abilities, and advancement focus rather than rigid classes or exclusive skill sets. Choose the playbook that best reflects how the character approaches danger and problems.

Every Blades character is already a scoundrel operating as part of a crew. "Criminal" therefore does not automatically mean Lurk.

Translating Capabilities

Translate Mar de Oro Capabilities into action ratings, fictional permission, background, heritage, items, contacts, and special abilities.

• Command may support military leadership, discipline, intimidation, or organised crew action.
• Study may support scholarship, Fortera theory, medicine, legal knowledge, and technical analysis.
• Survey may support navigation, observation, threat assessment, and reading a chamber or vessel.
• Tinker may support engineering, repair, calibration equipment, containment systems, and shipboard mechanisms.
• Attune may support direct sensitivity to Fortera or unusual resonance when that access is established in the fiction.
• Consort, Sway, and Command may express different forms of diplomacy, influence, court pressure, and institutional access.
• Hunt, Finesse, Prowl, Skirmish, and Wreck should follow what the character actually does in the fiction.

No action rating should be treated as a complete one-to-one replacement for an entire Mar de Oro Capability.

Fortera in Blades

Fortera may be represented through action ratings, fictional permission, custom special abilities, rituals, crafting, long-term projects, equipment, or crew development.

Sensitivity and observation

Simple perception or interpretation of Fortera may use Attune, Study, or Survey. Choose the action that matches what the character actually does.

Technical practice

Calibration, containment work, tuned instruments, and engineered applications may use Tinker, Study, Survey, or appropriate items or crew upgrades.

Advanced practice

Complex Powered Arts or ritual workings may require a custom special ability, the Ritual special ability, a long-term project, a discovered source of knowledge, a crafted device or formula, or specific fictional permission agreed by the table.

Not every Fortera practitioner is a Whisper. The Whisper provides useful mechanical examples, but it is not the literal Mar de Oro Fortera profession. Fortera is not the ghost field, electroplasm, demon power, spirit magic, or Doskvol arcana; those are Blades setting concepts, not Mar de Oro canon.

Rituals

Blades rituals are individually discovered, developed, and defined in play rather than selected from a universal spell list. A Mar de Oro ritual should establish its effect, required conditions, Stress cost, dangers, materials, duration, and possible consequences. Ritual practice may require the Ritual special ability or another explicitly agreed custom permission.

Suitable Mar de Oro ritual-development methods include:

• Researching a surviving record
• Learning from an institution or practitioner
• Studying a source zone
• Reconstructing a damaged process
• Completing a long-term project
• Creating a specialised device or formula

Fortera Overdraw

Overdraw is a Mar de Oro adaptation rule, not a standard Blades in the Dark term. In this adaptation, Overdraw may impose a fixed or magnitude-based Stress cost. Establish the likely cost and consequence before the player commits.

Overdraw may provide:

• Increased effect
• Increased scale
• Greater range
• Extended duration
• Potency against interference
• Completion of an otherwise impossible working

Overdraw may also cause:

• Fortera instability
• Harm
• Reduced future effectiveness
• A worse position
• A new or advanced clock
• Damage to equipment or containment
• Political or institutional exposure
• Reduced Éterlumin service life
• An unintended resonant response

Paying an Overdraw cost does not automatically count as pushing yourself. A character pays the normal additional Stress only when they separately choose to push for a bonus die, increased effect, or another standard pushing benefit. Do not automatically charge both Overdraw Stress and pushing Stress unless both choices are being used.

Éterlumin and Devil's Bargains

When an action involves unstable, active, poorly calibrated, or damaged Éterlumin, the GM or another player may offer a concrete Devil's Bargain. The bargain is voluntary. The player may reject it. If accepted, its stated cost occurs regardless of the outcome of the action roll.

Suitable bargains include:

• Advance an Éterlumin instability clock
• Reduce remaining service life
• Damage Rigging or Lift
• Damage containment
• Consume or spoil a serviceable reserve
• Leave identifiable evidence
• Alert an authority or rival faction
• Allow an enemy listener to receive part of a signal
• Give a chamber or phenomenon information about the character
• Create an obligation to a technician, institution, or faction
• Improve immediate effect while worsening a later position

An Éterlumin hazard that has already occurred should normally be expressed as harm, reduced effect, a complication, worse position, lost opportunity, or clock advancement. It should not be retroactively converted into a Devil's Bargain.

Éterlumin is gaseous and inevitably degrades. Active Éterlumin is flammable, but Éterlumin is not inherently toxic. Recalibration slows degradation but cannot reverse its age or make it permanently stable. Danger arises through pressure, heat, active fire, resonance, instability, containment failure, structural damage, and rupture.

Stress and Trauma

Stress represents the character's reserve for resistance, pushing beyond ordinary performance, special abilities, and other demanding actions. Trauma occurs when the Stress track is filled. It is permanent and may eventually force the character to retire from their life as a daring scoundrel.

A Burden does not automatically cause Trauma. Fortera exposure does not automatically cause Trauma. Overdraw does not automatically cause Trauma. A Bond cannot absorb Stress. Stress is not the character's soul or Fortera reserve.

Fortera strain may be represented by:

• Stress
• Harm
• A clock
• Reduced effect
• Worse position
• A special consequence
• A combination established before the action

Use harm descriptions appropriate to the fiction, such as Drained, Burned, Smoke-sick, Rattled, Resonance-marked, Concussed, Splinter wound, or Exhausted. Do not treat proximity to Éterlumin as poison damage.

The Crew

The ship, company, expedition, privateer band, intelligence cell, or deniable naval detachment may be represented through a Blades crew sheet. Begin by reskinning an existing crew type where possible.

Suggested starting points:

• Smugglers for transport, privateering, blockade-running, and covert cargo
• Shadows for intelligence, infiltration, espionage, and covert recovery
• Bravos for mercenary companies, naval enforcers, and coercive crews
• Hawkers for merchants, brokers, Éterlumin trade, and influence networks
• Assassins for targeted elimination and deniable operations
• Cult only where devotion to a genuine religious or ideological cause is central

Create a custom Golden Sea Company crew only when the campaign premise cannot be represented adequately by an existing crew type. A custom crew is not mandatory. A custom crew may include reputation, a lair or home vessel, claims, ship upgrades, cohorts, contacts, faction relationships, Éterlumin access, legal cover, debts and obligations, and crew-specific experience triggers.

Ships as Crew Assets

The crew's vessel may serve as its home, principal asset, source of debt, legal identity, means of escape, and central vulnerability. Represent vessel conditions through Hull, Rigging or Lift, Crew, Éterlumin Reserve, Command, Navigation, Gunnery, Engineering, and Observation and Communication.

• Use position and effect for immediate danger and leverage.
• Use clocks for pursuit, repairs, containment failure, altitude loss, interception, and degradation.
• Use crew upgrades for lasting ship improvements.
• Use cohorts for marines, engineers, sailors, agents, or specialists.
• Use long-term projects for major repairs and redesigns.

Do not import the D&D vessel AC, HP, broadside dice, or one-attack rule into the Blades adaptation. Blades resolves vessel conflict through position, effect, clocks, and consequences rather than fixed damage values.

Factions and long-term projects

Mar de Oro's continental powers, guilds, and heretical currents work naturally as Blades factions with clocks and long-term projects.