Forged in the Dark Conversion Pack

For the setting-level play philosophy this conversion is intended to preserve, see How Mar de Oro Plays.

Core conversion principle

Mar de Oro and Forged in the Dark already agree on the important thing: success changes the situation and creates new pressure. Use position for danger and effect for leverage.

Keep the native Forged engine for action rolls, resistance, Stress, Trauma, position, effect, clocks, flashbacks, teamwork, fortune rolls, faction Tier and status, advancement, load, scores, and downtime. Add a Mar de Oro rule only when the setting asks something the engine does not already answer.

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

Quick reference: terminology

The published Forged in the Dark conversion pack renames a handful of core terms so the fiction reads as Mar de Oro rather than Doskvol. The underlying mechanics are unchanged; only the reading of the term changes.

Everything else keeps its normal Forged meaning: action rolls and the 1-3 / 4-5 / 6 / critical results, position and effect, stress, resistance, armor, trauma and harm, clocks and fortune rolls, assistance, setup actions, group actions, protecting teammates, flashbacks, load, Tier, Hold, faction status, reputation, development, cohorts, the score and downtime cycle, and the Acquire Asset, Long-Term Project, Recover, Reduce Heat, Train, and Vice/Relief downtime actions.

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.

Actions in Mar de Oro

Keep all twelve actions. Change only what they mean in the setting.

Any character can notice obvious Fortera effects and can use instruments they know how to operate. Attune becomes appropriate when the character deliberately synchronizes with, reads, or influences a resonant phenomenon. Advanced workings still require training, an established technique, a special ability, a ritual, a device, or another clear fictional permission. Not every Fortera practitioner uses Attune: a technical calibration may be Tinker, a mathematical interpretation may be Study, and reading a chamber response may be Survey. Choose the action from what the character actually does.

Firearms

Firearms need no special damage system. A pistol, musket, rifle, Kalthoff repeater, swivel gun, or ship battery changes position, effect, quality, scale, and consequences according to the fiction. A firearm can make a controlled sniper shot devastating; it can also be nearly useless against an armored hull or a target behind stone.

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.

Scores and Engagement

A score begins when the crew commits before it knows every answer. A Mar de Oro score can be a privateering action, recovery mission, rescue, infiltration, political intervention, convoy attack, source-chamber entry, intelligence operation, battlefield task, legal gambit, smuggling run, sabotage, or deniable military action.

Plan reskin

Use the normal engagement roll. The roll does not decide whether the crew planned correctly. It decides what position they are in when the plan meets the living world.

Useful engagement questions

Flashbacks

Flashbacks are especially important in Mar de Oro because competent sailors, agents, officers, factors, and engineers prepare. Use the normal stress cost based on how elaborate or unlikely the preparation is. A flashback does not erase established facts, but it can reveal the papers, rope, contact, spare part, code phrase, bribe, hidden boat, signal plan, or prior reconnaissance that makes the current action possible.

VI. Position, Effect, Harm, and Consequences

Danger in Mar de Oro is often institutional, mechanical, and political before it becomes bodily. Use position for danger and effect for leverage exactly as the core rules describe; the factors below are simply where that judgment usually comes from in this setting.

When one factor dominates, say so before the roll. A pistol does not meaningfully damage an intact warship hull. A frigate caught squarely under the broadside of a ship of the line is in a terrible position until it changes the geometry.

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.

Factions, Attention, and Warrants

Mar de Oro's continental powers, guilds, and heretical currents work naturally as Blades factions with clocks and long-term projects. Use Tier, Hold, faction status, faction clocks, development, claims, and war normally. Faction status remains separate from legal Attention.

Heat becomes Attention: how much the authorities, rivals, public, employers, and institutions can connect the crew to recent trouble. Keep the normal Heat track and mechanics if you are using an existing sheet. A crew can be notorious in one port and nearly unknown in another; track separate Attention only when that distinction will change play.

Wanted Level becomes Warrant: the degree to which legal or political systems are prepared to formally act against the crew. A Warrant can mean arrest orders, seizure authority, revoked papers, bounty, naval detention, or a sealed intelligence directive rather than only criminal prosecution.

Downtime and Entanglements

Downtime is where repair, reputation, obligation, and consequence catch up. Use the standard downtime actions and read them in Mar de Oro terms.

Ship repair is a long-term project unless the damage is simple enough to resolve in free play. Describe the actual work and roll the appropriate action. Tinker is common, but Command, Consort, Study, Survey, or even Wreck can be right when the fiction supports them. Repair restores structure, resupply restores consumed capacity, and Resonance Tuning restores agreement. Do not let one downtime roll solve all three unless the crew actually has the means to address all three.

Entanglements

After payoff and Attention, use the normal entanglement timing. Choose or roll a type below. Use the crew's Warrant and current Attention to judge severity, reach, and how difficult it is to make the problem disappear.

After every score, ask who controls information, who controls access, and who controls the Source. Change at least one answer before the next operation.

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.

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.

Ship condition clocks

Do not pre-draw every ship subsystem. Create a clock when that subsystem becomes a live problem. These are useful default sizes, adjusted for the fiction and opposing scale.

A single consequence can tick more than one clock only when the fiction clearly contains more than one independent problem. Do not use subsystem clocks as hidden HP bars.

National doctrine as potency

A broadside is fictional permission, not a damage button. If the target is outside the battery's physical arc, the battery has zero effect until the ship changes bearing. Major Albion warships carry substantial forward batteries, giving fictional permission to threaten a target while closing or pursuing rather than waiting for lateral bearing.

Battlefields and Artillery

Use cohorts and clocks for the battle. Use character actions for the piece of the battle the characters can actually change. Represent companies, batteries, reserves, morale, bridges, smoke, reinforcements, and command failure with faction or progress clocks. A player character may Command a cohort, lead a group action, carry an order, sabotage a gun, scout a route, rally troops, or personally enter the point of decision.

Artillery usually has potency against exposed personnel, formations, structures, and ships. Range alone does not guarantee engagement. Observation, line of fire, cover, dead ground, smoke, altitude, and firing solution determine whether the battery can act effectively. When the characters reach the battery, stop treating it as a distant battlefield pressure: the gun has a crew, ammunition, tools, officers, cover, and physical vulnerabilities. Resolve what the characters do using ordinary actions.

Creatures and Phenomena

Mar de Oro creatures are not a second combat game. Give each one scale, potency, readable behavior, and something the players can learn. Use position, effect, dominant factors, harm, resistance, fortune rolls, and progress clocks. A dangerous creature can act first through consequences or preemptive resistance when its fictional advantage is overwhelming. Do not give every creature a mortality clock by default. If one action can decide the situation, one action is enough.

Source Beast Correction

Use a visible Correction rating beginning at 0. Each time a manifestation is destroyed by force without real progress on the contradiction, raise Correction by 1. At each level, choose one factor that now favors the Beast: potency, scale, quality, or a new fictional permission. Also reveal one additional true detail about what the Beast is correcting. Genuine progress lowers Correction by 1 and removes the most recent adaptation first. Harder to kill and easier to understand means force is failing. Calmer and less adapted means understanding is working.

GM Quick Reference

Keep unchanged

• Action rolls and 1-3 / 4-5 / 6 / critical results.
• Position and effect.
• Stress, resistance, armor, trauma, and harm.
• Clocks and fortune rolls.
• Assistance, setup actions, group actions, and protecting teammates.
• Flashbacks and load.
• Tier, Hold, faction status, reputation, development, cohorts.
• Score and downtime cycle.
• Acquire Asset, Long-Term Project, Recover, Reduce Heat, Train, and Vice/Relief.

Fortera

• Use Attune, Tinker, Study, or Survey from the actual method.
• An advanced working needs fictional permission.
• Overdraw costs Stress declared before the roll and forces extra effect, scale, range, duration, or potency.
• Overdraw is separate from Push.
• Embedding uses crafting or project structure and still decays.
• Resonance Tuning preserves an Embedding or restores calibration, never repair or resupply.
• Forced failed tuning can cause Catastrophic Tuning Failure.
• Wish is unavailable.
• Do not import ghost, hull, vampire, or other post-death cosmology. Return to life is a rare Fortera-scale working; Soul Shattering remains narrative and player-authored.

Ships

• Use Tier and quality, scale, potency, position, effect, cohorts, and clocks.
• Create subsystem clocks only when that subsystem becomes a live problem.
• A broadside requires lateral bearing; Albion has meaningful forward battery doctrine.
• Speed is a real Albion advantage.
• La Estrella Veloz and Spectre are peers; Aurora Ventus is tougher.
• The Justicar-class dominates direct line combat through scale and capital fire, but is sluggish.
• When boarding becomes the decisive question, switch to character scale.

After every score

1. Resolve payoff and Reputation.
2. Mark Attention in the jurisdiction that actually cares.
3. Adjust faction status separately.
4. Resolve one entanglement or equivalent institutional answer.
5. Advance relevant faction and Source clocks.
6. Ask who now controls information, access, and the Source.