A great thing about having a weekly “Okay, what are we testing out today?”-style table-top session with friends is that you get to try out plenty of different systems and settings. Some games last for a single session, like they were meant to. Others become mini-campaigns when you find something that everyone enjoys. It does lack the continuity and richness of having a single world you’re collectively building week to week, which a regular campaign can offer. The challenge is if you dwell too long on a single title or system, you lose the sense of exploration. If you skip too frequently between games, you lose a sense of continuity or cohesion.

Blades in the Dark has been a “collective itch” game for my group this past year, with repeated visits back to the same characters and setting. The city of Duskvol is a playground for our group of ne’er-do-wells who are would-be assassins and a criminal mastermind… who are currently raising capital to open a bakery and catering service. If you’re familiar with the game, don’t sweat the whimsy of it — the catering service is a ruse for our motley crew to infiltrate for bigger scores. (Plus, who doesn’t love fresh cupcakes?)

But this post isn’t about Blades in the Dark. That’s for another day. This is about Dogs in the Bark, an unofficial playset by Old Dog Games which you can get for free here if it tickles your fancy. In Dogs in the Bark, you play a stray dog on the mean streets of Duskvol, trying to turn up a next meal in a setting where the sun doesn’t shine and food is at a premium.

Add it into your Blades in the Dark campaign

If you’re playing a Blades in the Dark campaign, I’d recommend adding in a mini-arc of Dogs in the Bark. If you’ve been playing for a while, chances are you’ve got some level of collective world building happening between your players and game master, and have some familiar landmarks or non-player characters in the various districts of Duskvol.

The occasional one-shot or mini-campaign of Dogs in the Bark is a great way to be able to experience your world from a (very literal) different perspective. Whether it’s run by the usual game master, or a player takes up a guest spot to lead the experience, it breathes some new life into the world, whether it ties directly to your main storylines or not.

Our crew ran it because we knew we’d be a player short. Any shenanigans we got up to wouldn’t impact the main storyline, but was an opportunity to bring a little more creativity in character building, and try something entirely different in the same setting. For instance, another player decided to make their core character’s dog, who was independent enough from their assassin owner that they had a lot of spare time to wander the streets and get up to mischief. (And Rover will likely make a narrative appearance once our main Blades campaign kicks up again.)

Our experience with Dogs in the Bark

In our main Blades campaign, I play Arden “Vixen” Rowan, the bored housewife of a complicated (and highly criminally connected) man. In her spare time, she has become a criminal mastermind and entrepreneur, running a popular brothel in Silkshore that provides fair compensation and health care to her employees. (She may be a criminal mastermind, but she’s no monster.) She doesn’t get her hands dirty, as she has the rest of her crew for that. How it works out in the game is that she’s highly strategic and manipulative, like any good Spider playbook character could be. Arden often infiltrates with intention, either to extract information herself or cause enough of a distraction for the crew to finish the job.

Mr. Goobers is none of that.

Mr. Goobers is a dachshund with a bow tie who can see dead people. And expects belly rubs from them. In fact, Mr. Goobers belonged to a poor NPC in our main campaign who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and due to some unfortunate rolls, was killed. The score’s target was framed for her murder, but the NPC’s death had several consequences for the party. For whatever reason, that entirely made-up-on-the-spot NPC had some kind of lasting impact on our group, and it felt right to extend her as the ghostly dog owner of a dachshund.

Gameplay

Playing Dogs in the Bark is, unsurprisingly, very similar to the core game. Though, admittedly, our group had to pause and question what kind of score a pair of street dogs would get up to, as compared to more fleshed out and socially connected humans. Duskvol suddenly seemed a lot more isolating and yet free, once we realized we were approaching new districts as dogs.

Mechanically, the playset is similar. There are different dog playbooks and types to choose from, with vices to choose (“Consorting with spirits”) just as there are with their human counterparts in Blades in the Dark (“Pleasure”… take from that what you will). There are backgrounds and relationships to consider, just as there’s a crew scorecard to manage once the job is done, though for Bark, it’s your pack.

The biggest strength

At least at our table, our favourite thing seemed to be the creativity and whimsy of creating dog characters. Rover and Mr. Goobers weren’t the only ones created, even for a tiny one-shot. There was a goth Scooby-Doo and an Egyptian Jackal, as well as a pair, Maximus (yes, a nod to a great film) and their unlikely counterpart, Minimus.

And then while playing the game came the enjoyment of “how would I solve this problem… but as a dog”, as we were unable to rely on the tropes and opposable thumbs of our human characters. There was a real sense of Up-like “Squirrel!” energy while working our way out of some hilariously bad rolls and failures.

The biggest flaw

Here’s the thing: cruelty towards animals is lines and veils territory for me in most games. Harm my charm (through good gameplay and narrative structure, not just being a jerk)? Cool. Let’s go. Harm my make-believe animal companion? Not so much.

So, our group exuberance of “dogs!” soon turned into the realization that Blades in the Dark is the type of game that breaks your character by design. Death or early retirement hasn’t happened yet in our play through, but it’s a very real possibility, and one we’re collectively fine with for the humans. (Character death happens.) That sentiment changed a bit when we realized things were about to go badly for Rover and Mr. Goobers. (You could actually hear it in my poor GM’s voice once the rolls started going sideways and the clocks started ticking upward!)

While we were lucky that no harm came to our characters, that part would very much make me wary of playing it apart from as an agreed upon palette cleansing romp. I’m glad I had the chance to run it, and I genuinely appreciated the opportunity to experience collaborative world building from a different perspective. Our group’s Duskvol is a little bigger, and a little richer for having had the experience of viewing it through canine eyes. But I suspect our dogs will become NPCs in our main campaign… but the kind you all collectively agree that they escape anything truly harmful.