#slugblaster

ID: 1. This is Dex. Full body front and back view of a teenage boy grinning with one hand in his pocket on a grungey grey-brown background. He has medium-light skin and dark brown hair in an undercut with the messy mop up top partially dyed red, sparse newly-grown facial hair, two moles on his left cheek, and a scar through his left eyebrow. His other eyebrow is pierced, as well as his cheeks and septum. There are also multiple piercings in each ear with mismatched hoops and studs. He is wearing a ratty purple tee shirt that says 'Scam Cat' with a logo of a winking cat that says "it's legally questionable!" in a speech bubble under a leather jacket layered with a denim vest on top. The jacket has the sleeves rolled to the elbow and duct tape around one bicep. The denim jacket has studs on each shoulder, a few patches and pins at the chest, and says "Dura Weave" on each side of the chest. The back of the vest has more studs at the top and a large yellow and pink "Scooby Snax" patch. He has matching leather fingerless gloves and leather boots. His jeans are torn and patched in several places, duct-taped at the knee, and held up with a studded belt that has a ridiculous number of tamagotchis and hit clips hanging from it. Between the drawings of Dex is the front and back view of a hoverboard shaped like a classic skateboard, the faded black grip cut spraypainted "DEX" in red. Glowing blue strips that presumably make it hover line each edge of the board. The underside is covered with overlapping stickers, including: a large "question authority" decal in green and purple, a slime gun, a shooting spaceman, a wooden bead snake, a chromatically aberrated pizza that says 'infinite pizza', and more. Beneath the stickers but mostly covered are some things carved into the bare wood, including 'Dex is #1', 'Do Not Touch' and 'D+R' with a heart around it.

2. This is Cynthia. Full body front and back view of a teenage girl grinning with one hand on her hip and the other flashing a peace sign on a bubbly pink and purple background covered in sprinkles. She is small and slight with blue eyes, pale skin, and black hair with straight bangs pulled into two high pigtails. She has on elbow pads, knee pads, and fingerless gloves with sparkly pink detailing and matching fingernail polish and heart-shaped earrings. She is wearing a white crop tee with red sleeves and collar with text on the front that says "Dead Cute", the 'dead' in drippy red font and the 'cute' in bubbly pink font with white flowers. Her cutoff jean shorts are tye dyed with swirls of white, pink, and purple-gray, and the back pockets are heart shaped. She has white knee-high socks with pink polka dots and hanging pom-poms, blue and pink sneakers with a heart stamp on the tongue, and a pink and purple bubble backpack with several stickers. The stickers include one that says 'I (heart) Grinding' with a skateboard inside of a heart shape, one that says 'How's my skating? 1-800-SICK', and the same 'Scooby Snax' decal that Dex had on his jacket. Letter beads are strung between two o-rings on the back of the bag, spelling out 'friends' flanked by yellow hearts and her teammates' first initial (D and A). Between the drawings of Cynthia is the front and back view of a slushcult-style hoverboard with a pink and black checkered grip deck. Two large glowing blue orbs stamped with heavy-duty metal plating take up most of the underside; presumably this is what makes it hover. The rest of the plan black underside is covered in stickers, including: a color-inverted Weezer logo, lots of hearts and stars and pink petals, smiling french fries, a cute fox, a bisexual flag, 'save the dodos', a pink middle finger, and a large gold decal with a crown and lightning bolts that says 'heart' in bright blue.

The Rules

Slugblaster, by Mikey Hamm, is a game about teenage hover-boarders, built on the Forged in the Dark System, but compared to a lot of other Forged games I've played, it's very streamlined and easy to learn. There are only 5 base playbooks, and this is one of very few Forged games that I've played that has allowed the crew to do a bit of game play in the same session as character creation. This is because most of character creation is stylistic, rather than mechanical, and the biggest choice you need to make that influences your mechanics is your signature gear, which isn't made whole-cloth, but rather chosen from a library.

The biggest differences Slugblaster boasts in comparison to base Blades are related to Trouble and Kick. In Blades in the Dark, Stress is a track that fills throughout play and culminates in Trauma, which is a permanent consequence that alters your character for the rest of the game. In Slugblaster however, Trouble is the analogue for Stress, but instead of permanently changing you, it's used as a currency. During downtime, you can spend Trouble to further your character arcs, which are both cool moments that flesh our your character's personal story and character advancement tools.

Here's an example: spend 2 Trouble on "Trouble At Home" and describe how your family disapproves of your Slugblasting. You'll take a Slam (kind of like an injury, but could be emotional), and one teammate will notice that you're off your game. However, it also sets you up for the road to a significant payoff: "Redemption", which can clear a number of negative consequences or improve your character's Legacy.

Then there's Kick, which is Mikey Hamm's solution to streamlining Position & Effect. In core Blades, this is a pair of criteria that determine how bad your consequences might be vs how good success looks. It's a common stumbling block for new players, and explaining it typically requires a graph or visualization of some sort. Slugblaster solves this by giving you a resource called Kick - spend it to make your character's actions all the cooler, or get it for free by accepting more consequences should you fail. When I introduced Kick to my players, it was a much easier thing to pick up than any group that I've introduced to Blades.

The Game

The short campaign that ran for a bit in 2025 involved a crew of three players: The Hearts, The Guts, and The Grit. Their adventures included adopting a math-panther kitten and carrying him around in a bubble-backpack, bringing him to exotic places such as Prismatia, The Waking Pits, and The Local Mall. My characters made very distinct but vibrant characters. The Grit was dedicated, hardworking, and focused on their pet, but had the ultimate teenage sin of having an Embarrassing Parent. The Guts was bold and brash, and their main conflict was their super-religious family, who condemner Slugblasting as overly dangerous. The Heart was bubbly and brightly-coloured, and struggled to maintain a positive relationship with her older brother after she led her little sister into slugblasting a little too soon.

Achilles, the math-panther, illustrated by *@pbanditart on twitter.

One of the biggest things I loved about this campaign (apart from Achilles, the math-panther kitten) was the fact that prep was super easy. I never did more than 30 minutes of prep for this game, even for our first session after character creation. I could have the book open next to the GM aid, and the lists provided in the game were all I needed to come up with something new when the players overcame an obstacle. This was very stress-free GM-ing for me: every Run will involve going on an adventure to a cool dimension, fighting strange critters and pulling off neat tricks, while also filming your adventures for your adoring fans. It's a reliable recipe that serves up satisfying beats and fun drama along the way, and that's exactly what our group wanted.

In the one-shot I ran this year, I had a full crew: Hearts, Grits, Guts, Smarts & Chill. There were a few drawbacks to this, the primary one being that each player got less time in the spot-light. Our crew of partying shredders ventured into Thennis Spar, the garden haven of bug-priests and catacombs, theoretically in a race against a friendly Jet Collective. However, the players were much more interested in focusing on the weirdness of the world and their own character motivations.

There was a lot of investment in the kinds of people their characters were: do they have difficulty talking to their crush? Are they trying to blend in with their peers? How cool is their Voidwear Backpack? It was a different approach to the game, but in the end, teenagers are all a little self-obsessed, aren't they?

I also feel that the one-shot didn't give the group a chance to really lean into their full potential. I think almost all of the group said they would love to keep playing, so they could see where their character arcs could go.

The Vibes

Slugblaster pulls at your nostalgia, asking you to revisit whatever your teenage years happened to be. The game book doubles down on that nostalgia by infusing you with aesthetics that replicate Saturday Morning Cartoons like Ben 10 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; colourful, punchy, and saturated with flavor. The lingo of the game is a great example of this: you take "slams" (unless you "nope" them!), you come up with names for your tricks, like a switch-ollie-to-MJ-dragon-flipout, and when you want to put all your chips in, you say "check it".

The character arcs of Slugblaster are also really really good; Quinns talks about it in his highly watchable review of the game, especially that the arcs can teach a table how to tell a good story, and I think he's onto something there. I've also come across arcs in Jex Thomas' game Bump in the Dark, and the effect is similar. Engaging with arcs in two different games has encouraged me to play around with them in my own game, Protect the Child - you can help me test them in my playtest server!

One piece of the character arcs in Slugblaster that I think really hits the nail on the head is the human connections to your crew and your family. The highs and lows of your character arc revolve around disapproving relatives, crushes, and the forces that push and pull at the bonds that tie you and your friends together. You can make these beats as heavy or as light as you want: your family might disapprove because they're heavily religious, but they might also just be worried for your safety. You can choose to dive deep into an arc about depression with your teenager, or you can use the Angst arc to work through frustration over losing a Run. Both work, as long as you're respecting the safety and agreed-upon limits of the game.

The Takeaway.

I've said it many times before, and I'll say it many times again. The reason I love Forged in the Dark games so much is how little work it takes to get your group on the same page. There is very little orchestrated bullshit - no you-meet-in-a-tavern, no awkward introductions, no convoluted backstories. In Slugblaster, you're friends, cousins, classmates, and you all think Slugblasting is so fucking cool. You might be competitive, following your crush around, or just doing it because your friends think it's cool, but the game assumes that all of you care, and even when it comes to new players, it doesn't take that much for them to get on board.