TTRPG Babble: Ironsworn Starforged

For some reason, this particular post feels very difficult to write. I guess it has to do with the fact that I don't consider myself a persuasive writer and the things that I enjoy the most tend to require persuasion? I dunno.

Ironsworn - Starforged is a TTRPG that can be played solo, co-op (without a GM), or with the traditional GM-and-player setup. I would say it's primarily designed with solo in mind, but it provides you with the tools if you wish to play with friends.

Setting

Where the original Ironsworn had you roam the lands of a gritty fantasy scape, Starforged is a science fiction game inspired by the likes of Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. Your character is an Ironsworn: a capable person who takes on quests in the form of Iron Vows - just like the previous game - but you're travelling the vast space of The Forge as opposed to the Ironlands.

The Forge is a large cluster of systems and planets that orbits your character's galaxy of origin. Due to cataclysmic events (defined during the setup of the game), your character's people fled their galaxy to inhabit the Forge and has resided there for two centuries now.

Amazing art by Joshua Meehan

Setup

As with its predecessor, Starforged embraces 'prep is play' and the first thing you'll do is set up the circumstances your character will find themselves in. Things like religion, information technology, horrors, medicine, magic, laws, etc. are all covered in the setup so that you have a rich and unique environment at the start of the game. 

The second thing you create is the immediate sector of space your character will find themselves in. Starforged has an amazing range of oracles to assist with everything from the planets' habitability to the settlement's law enforcement. You're never really without help when setting up the circumstances of your character's journey.

And then finally, you'll create your character. Are they augmented in some way? Are they a sword wielder or do they shoot their gun from the hip? There are so many options that you can decide from. 

Character creation

I feel I should elaborate a bit on this aspect. In Ironsworn Starforged, your character has five stats that remain static throughout the game:

• Edge - agility and distance fighting
• Heart - courage, empathy, sociability
• Iron - physical strength and close-quarters fighting
• Wits - expertise, knowledge, and observation
• Shadow - sneakiness and cunning

These stats make up your character's immediate strengths. But then comes the asset system. In the beginning of the game, you select a number of assets that defines your character. As you progress through the game, you can gain experience points which essentially act as 'currency' to either purchase more assets for your character or to add features to an existing asset. 

The book says it better.

Game Mechanics

Inspired by Powered by the Apocalypse, the game has a number of moves that can get triggered by your character's actions. Once a move is triggered and a dice roll is required, you roll two 10-sided dice and one 6-sided die. The d10s are your challenge dice; your score will hopefully beat both for a strong hit or one of them for a weak hit. The d6 is your action die which is rolled to help determine your score. It along with the relevant stat and any bonuses will form your action score which you compare to the numbers of the d10s.

So pretty much the same concept as I babbled about in Ironsworn.  

How to get it

Purchasing the PDFs are fairly easy and can be done via DrivethruRPG, but getting the print version might be a little trickier. As of the time of writing this, a reprint is planned next year as most of the books have been sold out. For all the info of pdf and print copies, see here.

Thoughts

Ironsworn Starforged gives you the opportunity to have a rich adventure within the vastness of space that's only limited by your imagination (and the dice rolls). The rules are similar to the original Ironsworn, with very few changes, and yet it feels like an update to the original recipe. If you're into solo roleplaying and science fiction is a thing for you, then I'd heartily recommend Ironsworn Starforged.

To nanowrimo or not to nanowrimo?

 So, if you've been following this blog for the past couple of years, you'd know that I frequently participated in a funny "little" exercise called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). To make a long story short, the exercise is to write a story of 50 000 words in a month - specifically the month of November.

I last participated (and floundered spectacularly) in 2021 when burnout hit me so hard I would have been seeing stars if I wasn't so exhausted at the time. Last year, I didn't even consider it because the burnout bug bit me again. This year....?

I don't know. 

Part of me wants to do it again. It always feels exciting and then grueling and then delightful when you succeed on whatever your target was - be it the 50k or whatever else. I feel like I have the energy this year that I didn't have in the past two years. My problem is that I don't exactly have a story in mind. 

See, my favourite activity is not the actual writing. It's the planning. And by planning, I mean PLANNING. White boards and markers, pictures and notebooks, the whole nine yards. I love when I have something that I can explore, prepare, consider, work on. I spend an unending amount of time on it.

But this year, unless the idea lightning bolt hits me in two months, I would be writing without a plan. Which means there's already a 50% likelihood of not making my target. I'm one of those "fail to plan, plan to fail" people who can't pants anything. (pants = flying by the seat of your pants)

I do have a couple of options for if I do pants this thing:

• Colostle: This is a solo-rpg game I've babbled about before that I was very impressed by. If I were to use this as a mechanism to generate content, I will be set for at least... 10 000 words? I think I would be challenged to do a lot of worldbuilding and it would definitely take the form of a journal with 'daily events'. It is a possibility. I think my hesitation with this is that there are so few hand holds in the game and it's so free-flowing, that it's almost too reliant on my own creativity: which makes it daunting. The rules are painfully simple though. It's not something I'm going to get stuck on. It will just be "Can I think up what to do in this situation and stretch it into as many words as possible?"

• Ironsworn Starforged: I haven't babbled about Starforged on here yet, but I have talked about Ironsworn here and here. In Starforged, I think there's a bigger possibility to generate more words than I would in Colostle, but it will have its own challenges. Starforged is a 'prep is play' type of game, where you spend hours worldbuilding and then the story can start. I've done a bit of it, my brother brought me the books when he came to visit, and I immediately jumped in and started playing. The challenge I have is the fact that I still need to come up with an inciting incident. In Colostle, that's supplied. Your character has a list of possible motivations to choose from. But Starforged is very much a blank canvas and I don't know if my ol' noggin will come up with something interesting to start off with. Once I do get started, it's going to be fun. There is a LOT more mechanics and rules to the game, but because of how much I've played Ironsworn, I'm not too bothered by that. The biggest challenge will be the dice rolls. My dice hate me. So I might end up with a dead character. Fortunately, once you've done the world building, it's easy to just generate a new one and tell a different story.

Yes, I'm definitely leaning more towards Starforged, I'll be honest. Maybe my next post should be about Starforged just so that people can know what it is I'm getting myself into.

Other possibilities:

• Fanfiction: I used to be very into fanfics. I know it's controversial because some authors are okay with it and others are absolutely appalled by the very notion that you would dare think of writing a story with someone else's world. I'm of the opinion that it's writing practice and, so long as you're not an asshole about it (trying to claim the author stole your ideas and whatnot), it can explore aspects and situations that might even be insightful. I tend to stick to game fanfiction though as opposed to book fanfiction. The lines feel a little less blurry. But what would I fanfic about is the question. I'm still too angry at Bioware to give Mass Effect a chance. (Yes, yes, I know, it's a game, I should get over it, but I think this grudge might stay with me until I stop breathing). If I do write fanfiction, it might be something like for XCOM or such... but I don't know. I don't know if I'm in the mood or have the capacity to come up with a decent idea. 

• D&D: I think I play too much D&D and spend too much time prepping my homebrew to actually write in it. I think this still classifies to some degree as fanfiction... But anyhoo, I don't know. Here I would have to have a decent plan of action and something I want to write. I've done D&D playthroughs as writeups for Nanowrimo before. It works, it's just not very interesting to me.

• Original fiction: The least likely thing to happen - me coming up with an original idea set in an original world (it would be either fantasy or scifi-ish) is not currently within the capacity of this writer. My big problem with original fiction is that I love world building and can come up with some things that would interest me, but the actual main story? Pffft.

Regardless of what I do, I don't think I'm going to go into the social aspect of Nanowrimo. It used to be a thing: meeting other participants, going to write ins, etc. Heck, that's how I met the person who would eventually get me into D&D. So I am not going to knock it and say it's stupid or something. I just think I don't want to use the full machine that is Nanowrimo and will rather go with the barebones that is the initial concept. 

If I do end up taking the plunge, I'll probably share some of my progress here... maybe. 

D&D Babble: Finishing off Waterdeep Dragon Heist

I did it. It happened. After 38 sessions, the game which started in January 2021 was finally concluded last night.

It went well. Lots of laughter and one big 'whoops, maybe I shouldn't have done that', my chaos goblins chose the side of light and was still handsomely rewarded (because in my world, good deeds aren't punished... just a nice little shift from reality, no?).

Feedback has mostly been positive. Just one big glaring negative: not enough combat. This is both a flaw of mine and of the particular campaign. But this is also a group that's a bit more combat-orientated, which exacerbated the problem.

What was funny to me is how every victory had to be celebrated. Like a player rolled a natural 20 (I think it was the only one for the night) and pictures had to be taken. I love that. I love that the small things can be big things in this game. The group worked very well together, which was also great. We had long discussions about what to do, plans were constructed, reconstructed, scrapped and re-reconstructed. All good fun.

I think from my perspective, the biggest flaw of this group is scheduling. It was an utter bastard. It was also not a case of preplanning. Time was very fluid and last-minute cancellations were not uncommon. For the ISTJ, mega-planner, wanter-of-schedules this was quite a challenge. But I'm glad we stuck to it and got it done.

Whereto next? Dunno. I know the general feeling is to give Ris a break from DM-ing, but also that no one else seems to have time in their schedules to DM. Whatever happens though, I might suggest running the new Phandelver campaign with them in 2025. I'll only acquire it late 2024 and it will give me time to plan, create maps and set up the game on Roll20. 

Why not just purchase the module on Roll20, you ask? Well, because I wanted the book and buying both seems expensive. I just can't justify it. Plus building the module was a lot of fun. I don't know if this will be as fun... maybe I'm remembering the TONS of work fondly because of the years that it's been since I last did it? I dunno. We'll see. Maybe I'll cave. But for now, only the book.

Anyhoo, I'm rambling. Let me go do something more productive...