RPGs Part II: Going Solo with Ironsworn

Having been bitten by the RPG bug after having read Beowulf: Age of Heroes, I was looking for a solo RPG. Several reviews mentioned Ironsworn and so I headed over to the Ironsworn site to check it out.

First thing to mention is that the entire rulebook is available as a a free-to-download pdf, as well as a print-on-demand book (hard- or softback) from DriveThruRPG! Given that the rulebook is 270 pages long, this is pretty amazing. The rulebook is a high quality, B&W product, with crisp photography and graphics. The pdf version can also be easily navigated by hyperlinks, both from the contents page and embedded within the text. Having bought many rulebooks over the years, I have to say this is one of the best-written and laid out set of rules I have come across. The language is very clear, the mechanics are pretty easy to grasp, and there are several detailed examples of gameplay (which for a total RPG newcomer like me was perfect and really helpful). In addition, the prose is very engaging and quickly draws you into the setting. 

Set in the Ironlands, Ironsworn combines a fairly harsh Dark Ages setting with several fantasy elements. However, this setting is fairly loosely defined - just enough detail to get you going, but still leaving plenty of room for you to customise it to fit your own vision of the world. So you can have magic, sorcerers, dragons and elves if you want, or can pare these elements right back and focus more on grim human warriors fulfilling perilous quests. There is a whole chapter in the rulebook that guides you through the process of defining your world, which doesn't take long but is great fun! 

A fan-made map of the Ironlands. Ironsworn has a thriving community who produce lots of additional resources for the RPG

This process is really helped by the images in the book. Although all the photos are B&W, they really help you envision your setting. A nice touch (as can be seen in the images below) is that they feature men and women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, further enhancing the accessibility and diversity of the setting.

Probably my favourite picture in the whole rulebook!

The key game mechanic is making a Move - this covers a wide range of situations eg if you are travelling you 'Undertake a Journey', if you want to inflict a potentially devastating blow in combat you 'Strike', you can try and 'Heal' a wound and so on. Although there are a lot of Moves, they all work the same way - you envision the situation, decide on the Move you want to make and roll the dice - 1d6 and 2d10. Your character has certain stats (only 5 so very easy to keep track of) which you can add to the d6 roll to improve your chances of success There are three possible results. First, a Strong Hit where your d6 + stats score exceeds BOTH d10 scores and means you achieve what you want (usually with some small mechanical gain as well). Or you get a Weak Hit where your d6 + stats score only exceeds ONE of the d10 scores; this means your success is limited in scope or there may even be a small negative impact. Finally, you can get a Miss where BOTH d10 scores are equal to or greater than your d6 + stats score and you fail in what you were trying to achieve and there is usually a greater negative consequence on top of that failure.

Shawn Tomkin, the writer of Ironsworn, really emphasises that the RPG should be driven by the fiction, rather than the mechanics. Initially, this was something I found rather daunting - what if I couldn't think of how the narrative should develop? What if I couldn't envision the unfolding story? Wouldn't I just feel silly talking to myself? If I was the 'author' of the fiction, how would I be able to keep a sense of surprise and stop myself from knowing what was going to happen next? I have to say that in the games I have played so far, none of these have been an issue whatsoever. The Strong Hit/Weak Hit/Miss mechanic means you can never be certain of the outcome. Because of this the game can and does branch off in totally unexpected ways. Shawn also provides a whole series of 'Oracles' - tables for generating random events/encounters/characters/locations, which provide further unpredictability. 

Shawn also provides lots of other resources to support the game, like Asset cards which give a wide range of additional ways of customising your character - are they a hard-bitten Veteran warrior, a Mystic magic-wielder? Are they accompanied by a faithful animal Companion? Are they a Swordmaster or a Herbalist? There is a POD supplement called 'Delve', which adds rules for quests into the "deepest, darkest reaches of the Ironlands" such as underground caverns, icebound wastes or ancient ruins. 

Perhaps most useful of all is 'Lodestar', a 34-page quick reference guide which contains all the core information that you need to get playing, and for only a couple of pounds/bucks on DriveThruRPG it is incredibly good value and an indispensable playing aid. 

The front cover of Lodestar. The contents are all B&W

So how does it play? Well, for someone who had never played an RPG, I have to say I am hooked! It is very easy to get going, and any sense of self-consciousness soon faded away as I quickly became immersed in the quest of Einar Ingemarsson and his small warband as they set out to find out what happened to their chief's nephew and hopefully bring him back to safety. Above all, it is just great fun and I am thoroughly enjoying the experience of playing Ironsworn - testament to the excellence of the game Shawn Tomkin has produced. I can heartily recommend it to anyone, whether they have played RPGs or not (Ironsworn can also be played as a traditional RPG with GM and players, or as a Co-Op RPG).

Finally, if you want to get a flavour of what Ironsworn is like, Shawn Tomkin hosts the Ironsworn podcast, where he runs through a Co-Op adventure with his son and explains many of the rules along the way. I also highly recommend the Me, Myself & Die YouTube show, where voice actor Trevor Devall covers all sorts of solo RPG material, including an interview with Shawn Tomkin and an entire Ironsworn campaign (Episode 1/18 below):

RPGs Part I - Beowulf: Age of Heroes!

Despite playing wargames - both miniatures and boardgames - for many years, I have never played RPGs of any kind. I always thought you needed a DM/GM, so as a mainly solo wargamer I thought they were not something that would work for me in my context. However, this has changed over the last few months.

It all started with an RPG called Beowulf: Age of Heroes by Handiwork Games, an RPG designed to work with 5th Edition Dungeon and Dragons rules. This RPG is specifically designed to work with 1 player and 1 GM, although you can play it with more players. It is written and illustrated by John Hodgson, whose artwork also featured in many of the Warhammer Ancient Battles books and who also produces the backdrops you will see in many of the photos on this blog. Indeed, it was John's artwork that first caught my eye, as Beowulf is beautifully illustrated. Now, I like the whole Dark Ages period anyway, so the thought of playing games rooted in post-migration era Europe but with a fantastical, monster-hunting element really appealed. Even if I never played the RPG itself, I felt that there would be lots of ideas that I could use in my games.

So I ordered both the rulebook and the first supplement, The Trials of the Twin Seas. They are both gorgeous, hardback books packed full of really atmospheric artwork that evokes the period wonderfully and serves as inspiration before you have even read a word.

Obviously, Beowulf; Age of Heroes contains all the rules needed to play the RPG, but it also contains plenty of other useful information about the setting. There is a chapter describing the setting; the information here can readily be transported into a miniatures game to give your game plenty of period flavour. The rules for the RPG also contain lots of ideas that can transfer across - whether it is generating random encounters as your ship travels the Whale Road, coming up with particular characteristics or abilities for characters in a game, types of monsters you might face or generating random period names or the type of treasure you have found in the monster's lair. 

The supplement, Trials of the Twin Seas, contains six RPG adventures. With a bit of tweaking, most of these could easily form the basis of scenarios for a wargame, the great thing being that they will not require much in the way of figures (not that that has stopped me from buying new models like the Vendel Era models from Medbury Miniatures, which are just perfect for representing warriors and heroes in the era of Beowulf. They even do models for the man himself!). The book also contains battlemaps for the various locations, which can be used with miniatures in the RPG game to resolve combat, but which also show you the features you might need to recreate the scenario as a wargame on the tabletop. Another interesting feature is the inclusion of flow-charts showing the various stages in the RPG adventure. They provide a very useful framework for converting an RPG adventure to a tabletop wargaming scenario and I have been toying with how this idea can be applied more widely in wargaming scenario design.

Handiwork Games produces various accessories for the game, like the Story Cards pictured above. These are quite a clever way of inspiring an adventure with prompts tailored to the themes of Beowulf. The way they work is that one side contains artwork with numbers where jewels might appear on an artefact. These numbers appear in different sequences on each card eg 1, 2, 3, 4 or 2, 1, 4, 4, 3. On the reverse are 4 prompts; so you draw cards and use the prompts that correspond to the number sequence on the first card eg if the sequence was 1, 2, 3, 4, you would draw a card and use the first prompt, then draw another card and use the second prompt, and so on until you had four (or more) prompts which you can put together in any order to set your adventure off. I thought these cards would also be an excellent resource for generating ideas for a scenario, so I got a pack!

As I said above, Beowulf: Age of Heroes is designed for 1 player and 1 GM, and so in that sense isn't really suitable for me as a solo wargamer. Having said that, the books are packed full of inspiration and ideas, so I have enjoyed reading them just for that and the lovely artwork they contain. Nevertheless, reading Beowulf: Age of Heroes did make me want to play it as an RPG, taking the part of a warrior battling monsters in the dark corners of the world! This got me to thinking whether there was such a thing as an RPG that could be played by just one person without the need for a GM. So I popped 'solo RPGs' into Google and discovered that solo RPGs are a booming part of the genre. Enthused, I saw that one solo RPG in particular called Ironsworn seemed to have lots of favourable reviews, so I decided to investigate further; what I found will form the basis of 'RPGs Part II (SPOILER ALERT: It's really good!).