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Wow, literally judging a book by its cover.  I assure you setting art aside these games are quite excellent at what they aim to do. Though ofc I am biased, being a fan. So I encourage you to check out Ironsworn, which is free, and decide yourself! IIRC the art in Ironsworn (and Delve) were done by Shawn himself, and he admits it’s functional if it great. For Starforged he recruited an artist named Joshua Meehan who has done some amazing stuff for Starforged (and continues work in Sundered Isles). He also hired a couple other artists for individual pieces, such as the 2page spread sample Starship in Starforged. https://twitter.com/joshmeehanart/status/1523677112556670976 https://twitter.com/joshmeehanart/status/1514276761483165702 https://twitter.com/ShawnTomkin/status/1500543478240923650
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Jun 4, 2022 17:46
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I like the “people the designer could coax into LARPing a viking” look of Ironsworn. 
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Jun 4, 2022 17:51
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Shawn's stuff has a fun flavor to it in that sense lol. Actually IIRC Shawn specifically looked for licensable photographs of Medieval reenactors and LARPers to use as a base. Joshua's art meanwhile is much more photoshop, with layering and compositing outfits and elements from various pictures. If you look very closely you can spot all sorts of slight weirdness in the pieces. But when viewed as a whole they're wonderfully evocative. Joshua makes sure to use licensed pictures too, and has commented in the discord at how few licensable photographs of period-appropriate sailing ships are available for his work for Sundered Isles and has started musing on creating or licensing a more detailed 3d model for some pieces.
Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Jun 4, 2022 |
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Jun 4, 2022 18:04
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Fat Samurai posted:I like the “people the designer could coax into LARPing a viking” look of Ironsworn. https://twitter.com/ShawnTomkin/status/1526324214201872385
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Jun 4, 2022 19:10
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RIP Chris
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Jun 5, 2022 12:37
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Any tips on teaching the game? My SO saw me playing and she's interested in trying, but I'm no expert and I've never GMed a game.
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Jun 6, 2022 17:15
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Fat Samurai posted:Any tips on teaching the game? My SO saw me playing and she's interested in trying, but I'm no expert and I've never GMed a game. Ironsworn or Starforged? I'll admit that having learned and GM'd both, Starforged definitely sets you up better by basically setting the stage completely via the "getting started" section of the rules. When teaching the game, the best advice I can give is to just start narrating your story and character(s) and only look at the dice when you need to. The hardest thing for players of more traditional games like D&D to grok about this system is that not everything is a die roll.
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Jun 6, 2022 17:44
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Ironsworn, sorry.
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Jun 6, 2022 17:45
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Fat Samurai posted:Any tips on teaching the game? My SO saw me playing and she's interested in trying, but I'm no expert and I've never GMed a game. I'm in the same boat! I've recently started a game with my SO and it took a little ramp up but it's turned out pretty great. He's asked to play nightly and we've got a decently good story and setup cooking nicely. I'd say don't rush things. We spent the first session just talking about the game mechanics and explaining the basic concepts. We went over character creation, built in setting assumptions (i.e. vows, the ironlands, etc.), and briefly summarized the moves. Then I had him peruse the assets so he could start peculating an idea for a character. Next session we just focused on world-building, going through the work book, spitballing ideas, and coming to an agreement on the truths (this is with out any thought about characters yet). And then finally we had a third session just to create characters, coming up with the background vows, and collaborating on a starting town and inciting incident that would tie our characters together nicely. Just keep ask your SO for input on the setting as you go and avoid becoming the "GM" so to speak. I have a strong idea about where the story should go but have to keep reminding myself to not dominate the conversation. We've managed to compromise on our initial starting ideas to the point that we are succinctly tied together fairly logically in the story. Keep a list of potential factions that come out of the Truths work book and your starting town. Always look for a way to tie things together. And finally remember that world building is a valid form of playing and can be fun in its own right. There's no right way to play the game. If you're discussing the minutia of a town's political structure and economics for an hour going into stupid details that will never matter, as long as you're talking and having fun, that's all that's important. Our settlement leader is mysteriously ill, likely dying, and our town healer has gone missing. To add to that, the leader is fairly progressive and welcoming of refugees from another town that got sacked by a local anarchist bandit faction. If she dies, it likely won't be good for the refugees. Our characters are the apprentice healer and one of the refugees so we already have a personal stake and invested interest in finding the missing healer. We're following our only lead to the next town over which we just now discovered is missing their healer as well and are going apeshit over it. We've already have a knock down drag out fight with the two idiot sons of a hostile town elder (that's likely connected to all of this) and discovered that we are not good at combat! We both have Iron +1 
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Jun 7, 2022 21:02
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If it's not too annoying I thought I'd post some session recaps for our Starforged game in this thread. Hopefully it shows how the system can build a compelling story! Session 0 After deciding on truths, the group (4) each created characters largely using the random tables to find interesting archetype ideas. We have a sleuth/private detective (Duvall), a gearhead tech (Arvim), an ex-bounty hunter (Felix), and a smooth talking lawyer (Lucas). The setting is a fairly standard one, with a de-emphasis on aliens and the supernatural and an emphasis on human power structures and exploration. The history of the migration to this area of space is somewhat controversial (and undecided) but the common refrain is that a colonizing ship or fleet set off from the Solar System hundreds of years ago, and arrived in the Forge as a predetermined destination. The contemporary inhabitants of this region are all descended from these colonists, and no contact with other humans has been established in the intervening centuries. There are several hundred million humans currently living in the Forge, but no central authority exists. There are five major cultural/political powers in this region of space, with one being the Camorra, the future descendants of the infamous criminal syndicate hailing from 17th century Italy. This institution survived as a cultural relic but eventually grew in power to subsume whatever provisional authority existed in the decades after the arrival. The Camorra exists in a symbiosis with local sector governments, guiding or controlling economic and political outcomes. It is in such a sector that our game begins. In this relatively backwater sector, a mercenary fleet is amassing in preparation for an attack on the deep space outpost known colloquially as Ramshackle. Several mercenary outfits have been recruited by a local trade union to liberate the outpost, as it has been under the control of a small group of raiders for several weeks, with no signs of peaceful resolution on the horizon. Our characters have each chosen to be a part of this fleet, for various reasons, serving various capacities. As the fleet of perhaps a dozen ships is gathering and coordinating battle plans, a surprise attack is launched by Camorra-backed local enforcers. The attack is surgical and overwhelming. On one of the larger mercenary vessels, a lone escape capsule is jettisoned. The occupants watch from the lone window as the ship they occupied moments before is torn apart by autocannon fire. The capsule is fragile but designed to give off little evidence of its existence, for scenarios exactly like this. If the victors detect the survivors, they pay them no heed and quickly move away from the scene of the slaughter. Inside the capsule are four relative strangers. They eye one another warily as circumstance has forced them into a highly unenviable situation. A quick assessment reveals a roughly 48 hour supply of breathable air for 4 adults. The calculus changes with fewer drawing breath- the recycler unit can sustain 2 adults indefinitely according to the onboard manual. The capsule can make limited maneuvers but the nearest settlement is 3 AUs distant. Without rescue, the capsule is little more than a coffin. After ~18 hours of nervous chatter, futile brainstorming, and awkward silence, the tech (Arvim) begins stripping panels and tinkering with the capsule’s systems. Whether out of curiosity or a grim acceptance of fate, the others offer no objection. An indeterminate time later, the tech throws up his hands and kicks the console. If any hope remains, it quickly dissipates. Outside the beleaguered life raft, a billion metallic shingles reflect the blue light of the sector’s star. The quiet operator (Felix) contemplates eating a bullet, but decides doing so would be inconsiderate. Silence settles. In the dark, a grating klaxon sounds. Arvim leaps up from his fugue state, reading the lone systems monitor. “A ship! There’s someone out there powering up!” Sure enough, one of the mercenary transports has activated its power core. The makeshift sensor array reveals a ship operating under minimal but sufficient power. The craft is spaceworthy, if barely. After a brief discussion, the crew decides to approach the vessel and gather more information on it as well as gain a visual. Using the weak but functional maneuvering jets, Arvim pilots the crew closer. Short bursts are utilized, to grant a stealthy approach. With so much debris permeating the area, the capsule is nearly invisible- one more piece of metal in a sea of bent and broken steel. Through the window, it becomes clear that the ship in question has been badly damaged but has partial power to several compartments, including the bridge. The crew stealthily approaches, close enough to make out a single figure moving within the ship, wearing a vac suit. [Gather Information, Lucas - Weak Hit] After more observation, no other movement is detected and the crew arrives at a decision- infiltrate the ship and compel / convince the current occupant into allowing them a place on board. The tech deftly pilots the capsule to the aft of the target where a docking hatch is visible. [Face Danger, Arvim - Weak Hit] Unfortunately for the crew, the hatch is locked and can’t be accessed. Undaunted, Felix produces a cutting torch from his bulky pack. After some discussion about the potential risk of the ship being de-pressurized, the crew decides it’s now or never and force an entry. Luck is on their side and their entry point has air and pressure. [Oracle roll - Likelihood] Duvall volunteers to go first, slipping into the dark corridor quietly. Before he leaves, Felix wordlessly places a pistol in his hand. [Face Danger, Duvall - Strong Hit] The interior is clearly damaged, with makeshift repairs and patching evident everywhere. Ahead, Duvall can see and hear signs of activity near the bridge. [Gather Information, Duvall - Miss] The person on board, whom we expected to be attempting to get the ship back up and running, is in fact stripping the ship of its most valuable parts. His own shuttle is now visible to the crew through the front deck viewport, occupying the other hatch. To complicate matters, he is wearing a Camorra-affiliated badge and is armed. This is no ordinary grub. The crew decides to get the drop on him via trickery. We hide ourselves and Arvim triggers a minor alarm near us. As predicted, he heads toward the alarm to investigate and when the time is right, we spring the trap. [Face Danger, Felix - Strong Hit]. Facing 4 armed assailants, he flashes a disarming smile as he surrenders his sidearm to Felix. For a captive he displays little fear- suggesting this may not be his first run-in with hostiles. After some banter, he introduces himself as Wrenfield and informs us that his employers have a transport inbound (ETA 4 hours) to haul the pricey bits out, before abandoning ship. Lucas suggests that there may be a sizable insurance payout at stake, and attempts to gauge both the captive’s reaction to this suggestion and the claim that help is on the way. [Gather Information, Lucas (Aided by the ‘Empath’ Asset) - Strong Hit]. Lucas believes both his hunch and Wrenfield’s story. The crew confers on next steps. The ship is functional but can’t engage its engines until some serious repairs are done, which Arvim thinks will take about 6 hours. Arvim is the only one technical enough to make these repairs- but Felix suggests that Wrenfield could be made to help (pointing ever so subtly at his slung rifle). Felix attempts to use coercion. [Compel, Felix - Weak Hit]. Wrenfield is open to helping, but asks for several high value ship components in return, so that his employers will be satisfied. Admiring the man’s confidence and sense of self preservation, the group agrees and the two techs get to work, with the clock ticking. With the two working together, there should be just enough time to fire up the engines and get Wrenfield into his shuttle. The rest of the crew waits patiently while the minutes tick by. [Face Danger, Arvim - Miss]. The repairs are going along smoothly until a vital component gives out with only minutes left to go. There is a backup, but the backup is the primary requested component Wrenfield asked for in return for his assistance. After being informed of the development, Felix turns to Wrenfield and begins to suggest an alternate form of compensation, but mid sentence unleashes a brutal right hook to his jaw. The tech drops like a sack of bricks. With the Camorra craft now on long range sensors, the crew load Wrenfield into his exo suit suit and place him in his shuttle, unconscious. The crew also decides to leave him with some less-vital components, so he doesn’t face his employers empty handed. Every system is checked and basic diagnostics run, then the moment of truth. The engines fire on at nominal power. It’s not pretty, and the life support systems are slowly failing, but she’ll run. And that’s just what we do. FLIPADELPHIA fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jun 12, 2022 |
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Jun 12, 2022 03:21
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Ironsworn gets a lot of attention for it's solid solo play (and deservingly so), but I've been running as a GM for my group for a couple of months. This is the best campaign I've ever run, and my players absolutely love it. If you haven't tried it, you need to. It's best served with imaginative and proactive players, since the system kind of forces a more collaborative style of play. I'm not spending dozens of hours crafting and intricate plot with detailed NPCs and designing combat encounters. Instead, I walk up to the table with nearly no prep, and I ask the players what they want to do. When they succeed, I let them tell me how, and when they fail, I let them come up with the complication. I'm still in control of making sure everything connects and managing the campaign's momentum, but since the players have a hand on the wheel, they're so much more invested. And because no one is in charge of coming up with the whole story, we're all discovering the story together, which is so fun.
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Jun 27, 2022 01:02
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Since I posted last, I've joined in 2 more groups playing Starforged and all 3 games are going strong. In one campaign, I invited a guy I used to play 5e with when it first came out, and D&D is pretty much the only system he's played. After our first SF session he massaged me the next day and said it's the most fun he's ever had playing tabletop. Agree very much with the previous poster that proactive / imaginative players are a must. Gamers who show up with the expectation of a GM having a series of challenges/content dumps for them to consume are going to struggle with it. But if you can get people talking, and have a group that is ok with really firing from the hip, it can be pretty incredible.
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Jun 27, 2022 02:15
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Helical Nightmares posted:Found a good Starforged actual play by a blogger I enjoy. Thought I'd pass it along. Hey, thanks for the shoutout. My current game is a reimagining of Curse of Strahd, the modern classic DnD module but with a twist - Barovia has been replaced with Barlow, a sort of antebellum Southern US setting. Count Strahd von Zarovitch has been replaced by Governor Stephen van Damm, a somewhat dapper gentleman in an immaculate white suit. Castle Ravenloft is now Fairfield Manor, the largest plantation in the land. There's a few other analogs from the module that I'm porting over (I can't wait to meet the totally-not-Martikovs moonshiners), but I'm really hoping to tap into some common themes from southern gothic and folk horror. There's a lot of superstitions in the south, as well as a very dark past. As far as the game system goes, I'm doing a sort of hybrid game between Ironsworn and Starforged. For example, I like the Delve rules, but I think Starforged's Journeys are a bit more manageable. I have a few other tables that I'm using, including one for superstitions, and another for Strahd being bored. As far as characters go, I'm venturing into uncharted waters for myself by playing a solo game with three player characters. Gabriel "Gaz" Zidarsky is a member of a spy network called the Order of the Blind Eye, dedicated to squashing supernatural threats to the material plane Mink "Mouse" Trammel is an orphan, and seemingly a ward of the the Order, but with something much more sinister going on Havana "Havoc" Locutius is the sole survivor of a mercenary company The Implacable, and he's guilty, angry, and ready to hurt someone about it You can follow along on my blog, I'm doing my best to keep to a once-a-fortnight schedule.
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Jul 1, 2022 21:44
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Thinking of starting up a solo Starforged game, did some of the set up last night. Companions and Connections are two mutually exclusive things, right? It seems kind of weird for a space game to have a whole set of rules and an experience track about building relationships and then not let you use them for characters who your PC interacts with the most. Unless like, that's the whole point, and using connection rules for companions is OP? If that's the reasoning-- do people think it's because of the mechanical benefit of a connection/bond to moves or because it would let you get experience too quickly? I want to know what I'd be breaking if I decided a companion was also a connection. I mean, I know there's nothing stopping me from making companions important characters with beats and development and character growth but I do find it a little odd that the very clever mechanical incentives for that are excluded. I know it's not quite the same set of genre assumptions but it's like as if there was a Star Trek game that only incentivized building relations with Starfleet admirals, or a Mass Effect game that only had rules about relationships with the Spector council.
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Jul 13, 2022 17:45
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You’re already assumed to have a good relationship and “bond” with your companion(s) in Starforged, or that one will develop rapidly. They’re your Chewbacca, your Spock and McCoy, your Stephen Maturin. They’re also intended to be constantly at your side, ready and willing to help barring extreme circumstances. They’re your “party member”. Contacts meanwhile, while you can potentially share the deepest of Bonds with them, are not meant to be “party members”, they might join your travels temporarily for a specific goal but the spirit of the rules is that they are not traveling companions and shouldn’t be constantly available or frequently traveling with you. If you want a companion with whom you have to more actively develop a relationship then go ahead and give them a contact style progress track. The game won’t break because of it. And if you do want to have a contact or contacts be a more regular feature in your story (such as you have a ship with many crew members or are closely involved with a community you’re almost always around), you could take a look at the Sundered Isles preview assets, assuming you have access to the Starforged backer g.drive. One of the assets, Cohort, is for having a handful of Contacts who DO travel with you regularly (intended to be officers or specialists on your ship) and grant you their benefits more frequently (but you can also potentially lose access to their services as a Pay the Price due to injury, personal conflict, etc). This would be your Scotty, your Sulu, and Uhura as opposed to Spock and McCoy. It’d also cover most of the Mass Effect party NPCs I imagine. There is also another one, Crew Commander, that deals with a general body of crew as a resource for improving results. [Edit] I really need to get around to starting that test game if Sundered Isles… Galaga Galaxian fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jul 13, 2022 |
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Jul 13, 2022 20:47
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Thanks for the advice! I went ahead and gave my companion a connection style bond track. Still, your examples made a ton of sense. Kirk and Spock might clash in an episode but the strength of their friendship never really wavered. How do people make a record of their sessions? If you write something out, do you use first person or third person? Past or present tense? I played an hour or so today and wrote out something mostly very zoomed out, like a plot treatment or a wikipedia plot summary, with some occasional detail and dialog. Started third person present but ended in third person past, not sure which I'll stick with. Even in the pretty sketchy way I'm doing it I feel like this method is really slowing me down, and I consider myself a pretty quick writer. On the other hand I'm really not too sure I'd be able to "envision" details and results in a way that would mean anything to me if they weren't basically full sentences. It leads to some choppy writing-- I started with exploring a precursor vault and the scenes have been basically "PC comes to a weird room, goes 'that's weird," continues" over and over again-- but I'm finding space to add character and world details I'm enjoying and the game part of the system feels both well designed in-and-of itself and also as a way to feed into the narrative. I've also been shockingly impressed with the oracles too. My first roll of the campaign was a gather information on the outside of the vault, looking through the remains of the base camp of the expedition my PC was sent to rescue. I rolled a matching miss, and was at kind of a loss. One oracle roll later and I had generated "haunted artifact." Well, maybe the ghost of one of the researchers was there? So now my PC is dealing with a precursor vault and ghosts simultaneously. Great! Game's real good and I can very much see myself getting into the groove for solo play.
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Jul 14, 2022 05:45
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I've tried to get my wife into board games, video games, but they're usually too mechanics heavy for her. Ironsworn is just the kind of abstraction and creativity she likes. Thanks thread. Her character is an archer named Nutmeg, who goes on a quest to find out why her namesake spice isn't available in our village anymore.
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Aug 6, 2022 04:04
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I've been picking up my Starforged campaign again after a brief hiatus, and I gotta say that I've really been enjoying doing it as a passtime again. As of late, I've been trying to schedule playing a session at least once a week while sitting outside in the garden on my tablet. Just wanted to highlight a couple of things that have really helped me keep interest this time around:
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Aug 15, 2022 22:24
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I def need to use clocks more in my weekly game.
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Aug 16, 2022 04:45
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Baron von der Loon posted:[*]One of the key things I've been doing is being less hard on my character. I read an article(I think by the author of the books?) about how solo gamers tend to be notoriously difficult and harsh on their own character, and I really noticed that I'd been doing what he was describing. So I've tried to make things a bit more heroic, more things happening by the seat of the character's pants instead of the whole plan collapsing due to a single mistimed roll. Yeah this is definitely an important thing for solo RPGs. I like to take a page from its PbtA roots and do "Soft" vs "hard", the first miss introduces a potential bad thing but I still have a chance to mitigate it, if I fail again then I get smacked. EG: A miss in combat might result in giving an enemy a good opening to attack, if I miss again trying to defend/avoid/whatever, then I take a Endure Harm hit or whatever. I too need to work on integrating clocks into my game... I also need to pick my game up again, its been a couple months since I touched it, lol.
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Aug 16, 2022 07:24
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Using AI generated images sounds like a pretty fun idea. As for being harsh on characters-- I think one thing I noticed between solo and group play more in recent years is the situation where whoever is in narrative control doesn't think that a success was "earned" or made things "too easy" and then they call for successive roles to sort of "prove" that success. And as a player that can be frustrating and it's not really how the systems are designed. Especially in a solo game where you're both roles you have to really trust the system works the way its intended. Now, at the end of the day in a solo game you're entertaining yourself so please feel free anyone who likes or feels like doing that sort of thing works for them. As far as rolling on Oracles goes, that's really where personally I find a lot of struggle with some types of solo gaming. Personally I need a lot of structure in the tables that I roll on. While I know some people are fine with like, a single table that answers positively or negatively based on probability. That's way too loose for me and I feel at that point I might as well just be writing and plotting a story rather than playing a game. The two activities are completely different for me. Having a really rigid structure though isn't completely binding and if I do find that there's something cool I want to have happen or want to take the story towards a certain experience, I feel free to just choose to do it. Pretty much every table is Roll or Choose and that's something I've learned that works best for me. What constraints you put on yourself is completely up to you to decide and it's fantastic to find out what works best for you, even if it can be frustrating going through the process and study of what it is alongside the process of figuring out a system that works for you, too.
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Aug 16, 2022 07:44
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probably a silly question—can you backport or crossport or whatever assets or paths between Ironsworn and Starforged? I’m a deeply cringe failer and I want to play Ironsworn but with futuristic guns so I can do Destiny 2 Dark Ages stuff, and while I could easily reskin archery it’s probably a better fit for the fiction to just be able to take Sniper.
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Aug 24, 2022 18:53
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Pretzel Rod Stewart posted:probably a silly question—can you backport or crossport or whatever assets or paths between Ironsworn and Starforged? Having also done Destiny 2 Dark Age stuff, they work well enough for porting from IS to SF; I can't vouch for the other way around since I didn't try. Some minor modifications to make but not too many.
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Aug 24, 2022 18:58
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Yes. The assets and paths are the most transferable elements between the two systems (IMO).
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Aug 24, 2022 18:59
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There's almost nothing that doesn't transfer between the two given how little changed with the systems. You can also easily adapt it to any setting or theme if you make up some custom assets. Cthulhu horror? Pirate captain? Mad Max? Go hog wild with it. The only struggle is having enough random tables for various settings but the internet easily provides for that.
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Aug 24, 2022 19:06
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awesome. I thought as much but am a legendary procrastinator and had to run it by some folks first. (also love that someone had the same idea, lol.) thanks!
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Aug 24, 2022 19:11
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The Discord even has a subchannel dedicated to backporting Starforge to Ironsworn (or perhaps more accurately playing Ironsworn's setting in Starforged's version of the ruleset).
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Aug 24, 2022 19:14
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Galaga Galaxian posted:The Discord even has a subchannel dedicated to backporting Starforge to Ironsworn (or perhaps more accurately playing Ironsworn's setting in Starforged's version of the ruleset). This is a decent google sheet with tips to swap between both systems.
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Aug 24, 2022 21:31
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Shawn Tomkin has released another batch of Sundered Isles preview materials for those that have backer folder access. Several more WIP assets and a first draft of the setting truths.
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Sep 8, 2022 00:28
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I've been getting back into Starforged and would like to share a 'losing if fun' story... well maybe not 'fun' in the moment, but it can be more interesting. My character is a sole survivor of a mercenary company who had an incident. She can’t remember what happened, so her background vow is finding out what went down. I had an extraordinary stroke of good rolls early in her story. I managed to get two feuding factions of a thoroughly corrupt space station to compromise thanks to rolling nothing but strong hits and getting my momentum up to +10. Not going into details because with all that success, the story was pretty straight forward. No curves or bumps along the way. Her next outing was much more interesting, if frustrating. The former captain of her mercenary company had left behind a cache of information on a nearly abandoned trade station in deep space. What it was she had no idea, but it was a lead. She blazes her way to Argosy station the ship gets a few bumps on the way, the rolls are not nearly as good now. She finished the expedition on a weak hit, I roll the complication and it’s a former enemy sending a threat. I’m playing a very isolated setting, with no subspace communication, so in game she gets this mysterious message “I know what you’re doing, stop now.” on one of her monitors. It disappears quickly and she can’t track down the source. Did is come from the station? From the ship's computer? She can't find any record, even if she knows she saw the warning. She approaches the station, their attitude is rolled as “asking for help” I roll for what they need help with and it’s “volatile energy source”. Perfect, her ship is powered by a precursor device, I figure so is Argosy Station, there are only a few people there, mostly stragglers taking their time packing to leave the now irrelevant base so there’s not a dedicated engineer. She figures she can take a look, what’s the worse that can happen? She goes to the reactor. Gather information and Strong Hit. I figure this is a great chance to set up a scene clock. So, she finds out a meltdown is imminent, I’ll put 6 ticks on the clock and see if she can save the station and more importantly the information she is after. I can’t even get a weak hit. I imagine her in her aviators, all cocky getting ready to save the day like she did on her previous adventure: “Alright I got this, just vent the exhaust system… oh, no no no. Maybe more cooling solution... Oh poo poo, that made it worse. Okay, what does this button do?” I was sitting at 2 ticks left, no progress on the track at all. I don’t need an odds calculator to know it is very unlikely she is going to succeed. She says ‘Abandon ship. NOW. She’s going to blow!” I figured with 2 ticks left this gave the handful of people on the station a chance to evacuate. With every fail on the scene clock, I choose not to ’pay the price’ even though rules as written said I should, I figured the clock ticking down to failure of the mission was enough. I did have her roll to escape the base unscathed: weak hit.Alrigh, her expedition data was lost somehow, she forgot to save it or she uploaded it to the station which is now debris. I also had to take the loss for abandoning the seemingly easy mission “see what was stored on the station”. I took 2 spirit as she’s not used to losing. So, looking back. She’s now sitting in space with a small flotilla of civilian ships. She’s sure the reactor at the station was sabotaged, now she just wonders if that message was sent by the saboteur. If it was, was it a warning to protect her, or to stop her from finding out what was in the secret cache? Both? It’s funny, as good as it felt to win all those rolls that first mission, the losses on the second created a LOT more interesting story and now she has a bunch of different angles to pursue.
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Sep 20, 2022 19:31
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There have absolutely been times in RPG play where I've likewise ended up very glad to have had a few failures. It's an excellent case for why death as a default failure state has some major pitfalls in mechanics design. Anything else is usually far more interesting and drives situations forward. Good story!
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Sep 24, 2022 03:43
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I've been real tempted to start up a game using the Sundered Isles preview material (if only cause my Starforged game has stalled a bit) but I can't decide on a few things like a character concept split between anti-imperialist gold-hearted pirate or just adventurous explorer. I also can't decide between traditional ocean-going sailing ships or sky pirates/skyworld, and if the later, what kind of ship aesthetic (wood sailing ships, steampunk iron ships, or dieselpunk with zeppelins and fighters, basically Crimson Skies/Talespin in a skyworld setting) Then again I've also been playing Conan Exiles on PC a bunch lately and kinda tempted to try an ironsworn game inspired by that and the RPG Sorcerers of Ur-Turuk, as I've never gotten around to do a magic-flavored game (unless you count one of my Starforged characters being a NotJedi as magic).
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Sep 25, 2022 02:23
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I played a bunch of Ironsworn with my buddies but now I'm doing Starforged solo. I'm sure the answer is "Do whatever you want!" but what am I supposed to do while I'm playing? Is this all in my head, am I talking out loud, writing the adventure down, something else? I started my character in Stargazer and i've been trying to write down what I'm thinking, but I find myself getting hung up on writing and editing what I write.
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Sep 27, 2022 23:15
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ape!!! posted:I played a bunch of Ironsworn with my buddies but now I'm doing Starforged solo. I'm sure the answer is "Do whatever you want!" but what am I supposed to do while I'm playing? Is this all in my head, am I talking out loud, writing the adventure down, something else? I started my character in Stargazer and i've been trying to write down what I'm thinking, but I find myself getting hung up on writing and editing what I write. People do different things. You can keep short bullet-point notes - event, dice roll, result. You can do that and write journals afterwards. You can write journals as you go along.
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Sep 27, 2022 23:56
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ape!!! posted:I played a bunch of Ironsworn with my buddies but now I'm doing Starforged solo. I'm sure the answer is "Do whatever you want!" but what am I supposed to do while I'm playing? Is this all in my head, am I talking out loud, writing the adventure down, something else? I started my character in Stargazer and i've been trying to write down what I'm thinking, but I find myself getting hung up on writing and editing what I write. I tend to write and edit myself to death, so I have been either timing the bits that I write or limiting them to 3 sentences/lines or so per thing-that-happens. It sorta works. Part of it is, I just like writing, but I have to balance that against enjoying a game that is actually progressing. What's working for me at the moment (we'll see longer term) is integrating a present tense, 3rd person interactive fiction voice. The few IF games I've played don't just drone on, they have to be short and to the point, they're "aware" of a certain textual economy, like how much room their text takes up on a screen, and only mentioning what would be of interest to a motivated player. I'm also conscious of channeling the old Choose Your Own Adventure books I read as a kid. So like, instead of a soliloquy about the weather, it's just like, "It's sunny and cool. The flowers nod in the breeze. Jim notices a door in a tree, painted in a chipped and faded blue." It's just like, "scene setting, mood setting, thing I can take action upon, go."
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Sep 28, 2022 07:57
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ape!!! posted:I played a bunch of Ironsworn with my buddies but now I'm doing Starforged solo. I'm sure the answer is "Do whatever you want!" but what am I supposed to do while I'm playing? Is this all in my head, am I talking out loud, writing the adventure down, something else? I started my character in Stargazer and i've been trying to write down what I'm thinking, but I find myself getting hung up on writing and editing what I write. What I do is tend to start with just writing down a very basic, bland version of the events as a recording of the like-- mechanics behind what's going on. If I get really invested in a session I might include dialogue or start being more descriptive of what I'm imagining happening while it's going on, and that will sometimes get cleaned up or added to after the fact if it feels worth it to me as something I am going to want to go back and reread some time. Mostly I don't really tend to do that, though. Going back and skimming the notes is often enough to make me remember what had happened and like, I am not really playing these games to produce something readable to other people or something that even needs to be understood by anyone other than me. There used to be a time where I'd try and make physical journals of the things that happened, either as sort of in-character recollections of events or as if it was a story to be read, and while I loved the craft aspect of it I found that I would stick with a story longer than I was actually interested in it because I felt like otherwise I would be wasting materials or producing something that wouldn't ever be finished (also lmao at the idea that I'd let anyone else read them) and moving to digital documents ended up helping move on sooner and being happier with the stories as a result. It also has meant that I've sometimes wanted to go back to something I've abandoned and then continue it because I'll get new ideas and no longer feel like I've run the story into the ground.
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Sep 28, 2022 13:20
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Thanks everyone, this was helpful. I have a lot of pockets of downtime at work, so I like the idea of just jotting down the bare minimum of the mechanics and events and then coming back later to flesh the story out where I want.
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Sep 28, 2022 13:30
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People are starting to receive their physical copies! So far people in most areas besides the Americas should be getting theirs. North America is slightly delayed due to backlogs with ground based NA Distribution, but should be getting theirs late this month or early next. Anyone get theirs yet? Meanwhile, this game really knows the perfect times to hit you with a miss with a match. I'm playing a Star Forged game that is set in a heavily Star Wars flavored version of the Forge (all the basic trappings besides aliens) and I'm racing through space with NotImperial NotTIE fighters hot on my heels, and after a few daring rolls its time to make my progress roll and make good my escape: quote:[Progress Roll: Escape the snubfighters into Witchspace!:Miss = 8 vs 8 | 8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nzwdLjnIug Its like it knows...
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Nov 5, 2022 23:34
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Galaga Galaxian posted:People are starting to receive their physical copies! So far people in most areas besides the Americas should be getting theirs. North America is slightly delayed due to backlogs with ground based NA Distribution, but should be getting theirs late this month or early next. Anyone get theirs yet? Got mine and it's extremely high quality. I'm glad the reference guide is the same size as the standard book (Ironsworn's is A4 format so it really clashes on the shelf), also the asset cards are great.
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Nov 6, 2022 21:36
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I still don't love the asset cards and his refusal to include their contents in the book/reference but its easy enough to print them as sheets and write them on the character sheet as gained.
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Nov 6, 2022 21:43
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