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Ironsworn: Starforged
244 pages, ebook
Published April 27, 2021
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48 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 21, 2023
This game and the original Ironsworn are directly responsible for my reading-books-time taking a massive hit in the past two weeks, though an argument can be made that any "game" that inspires one to be creative has equal value to passive reading (possibly more?)
I love roleplaying and TT/P&P RPGs. I know how to hack systems to be single or solo play, but with Ironsworn/Starforged you can do solo play 'out the box' ('out the book'?) with no adjustments to the system necessary. I have seen some people augment this system with their own Oracle tables or additional mechanics, but while that's definitely another layer you can add, it's strictly not necessary.
I'm not in a situation where I can easily keep on schedule to play RPGs with others right now, and hacking systems can sometimes be a bit of a headache. The IS/SF system provides just the right level of simplicity vs complexity, action vs narrative worldbuilding, and is also just really dang fun.
I really want a hardback copy of this book for my RPG module collection but the first print run sold out almost immediately!
I love roleplaying and TT/P&P RPGs. I know how to hack systems to be single or solo play, but with Ironsworn/Starforged you can do solo play 'out the box' ('out the book'?) with no adjustments to the system necessary. I have seen some people augment this system with their own Oracle tables or additional mechanics, but while that's definitely another layer you can add, it's strictly not necessary.
I'm not in a situation where I can easily keep on schedule to play RPGs with others right now, and hacking systems can sometimes be a bit of a headache. The IS/SF system provides just the right level of simplicity vs complexity, action vs narrative worldbuilding, and is also just really dang fun.
I really want a hardback copy of this book for my RPG module collection but the first print run sold out almost immediately!
November 11, 2025
"Ironsworn: Starforged" excels at making tabletop RPGs approachable without sacrificing depth. What impressed me most is the didactic structure. You can start playing quickly with a session zero and learn the rules gradually as you go. The game introduces mechanics intuitively, with each concept building logically on the previous one. Rather than overwhelming you with comprehensive rules upfront, it guides you through its systems naturally.
January 15, 2026
So I read the 200+ page ‘preview’ of this game and had some questions on how some of it worked. I asked on reddit and they said RTFM. Which sucked because I hadn’t bought the manual. I wanted to figure out how it worked to decide if I wanted to buy the fabulous manual.
So I bought it. We’ll see if its any clearer how it works now.
Like Starblazer Adventures I’m really mining it for ideas rather than inclined to play it. Of the 7 games it lists as inspiration, I already hate 4 of them.
Physically, it’s an absolutely gorgeous book, which definitely lessens the sting of buying it. Two ribbon bookmarks! 6x9 digest sized hardback (same size as Paleomythic).
The game uses ten-sided and six-sided dice. It also says you need asset cards which are really equipment cards. It also says you need the Starforged Playkit which as far as I know is just a set of blank forms to fill out your adventures on.
This game claims to be inspired by Firefly, Aliens, the Mandalorian, the Expanse, Guardians of the Galaxy and Battlestar Galactica (new not old!). How these all relate to each other I have no idea other than that the author likes them. I like them too but they seem to be completely different games if I were to base an RPG on them!
The Setting gives a page and a very rough outline which matches most science fiction settings: Terminus, Outlands, Expanse, and Void. Roughly Civilized, Colonies, Wilderness and Here Be Dragons.
Next it talks about the Mechanics and the Fiction and gives the usual BS about how the fiction comes first and then the dice rolls. This is just a stupid way to say the same thing RPG’s have been doing forever, but “We’re different because we use the word ‘fiction’ in front of the dice rolls!”. No. You’re not.
Next is the Iron Vow. I’m not sure where this comes from - I suspect the fantasy version of this game - which came first. It gives the idea that you swear on your tasks and are therefore driven to complete them. Not sure what this adds to the game frankly.
Your Character is basically your character sheet. There are five stats: Edge (Dexterity), Heart (Charisma), Iron (Strength), Wits (Intelligence) and Shadow (Wisdom, geared towards sneakiness).
Assets are your abilities, gear and stuff, all pre-packaged as cards. I suppose it makes sense money by selling the cards, but again it seems repackaging of traditional RPG stuff for no particular reason.
One thing that is very different from traditional RPGs are the ‘tracks’ you are expected to keep record of. These are all 10 check boxes called Quests, Bonds, Discoveries, Impact and Momentum. Health, Spirit and Supply are also ‘tracks’ but these function fairly similar to normal RPGs. Supply is a rather abstract measure of how prepared you are equipment-wise.
NPCs are dealt with as allies, companions, and connections. All pretty straightforward except they are all measure by a single stat - rank.
Making Moves describes boiler-plate situations and how they are resolved, depending on the dice roll. Some types of moves result in checking off progress tracks. Many f the move results require other move rolls. It notes that these are based on the Apocalypse World concept of moves, but these moves aren’t restricted by character class as most PBTA rules are. There are also moves that are made and applied to the entire group.
The Action Roll is the dice mechanism that uses 1 six-sided dice and 2 ten-sided dice. I find using ten-sided dice annoying considering there are only three results. A Strong Hit, A Weak Hit and a Miss. A ‘fumble’ or ‘critical success’ result occurs with a Match roll - both d10’s roll the same number. This can lead to special failures or successes. A Miss sends you to those Pay the Price Move.
Momentum is another ‘progress track’ but you’re only tracking lucky bonuses or penalties. Again, this doesn’t see to add anything to the game except increasing your chances to win if you’ve won or lose if you’ve lost. So if you didn’t use it at all… would it matter? This all seems very ‘board gamey’ to me. You can spend Momentum for die roll bonuses, which causes you to reset your Momentum back to +2. Negative Momentum will automatically hurt your die rolls. A whole lot of fiddly for die roll modifications that have absolutely nothing to do with story, action or drama. ‘Fiction first’ my ass.
Progress Tracks are another gamey mechanism that requires you to determine if your ‘Challenge’ is troublesome, dangerous, formidable, extreme or epic. This tells you how many tick marks it takes to cross one of ten boxes off that progress track. There are moves which gives you ticks on your Progress Track but the only example they give is the Take Decisive Action move, which tells me absolutely nothing.
There are also Legacy Tracks which just appear to be tedious way of gaining experience. There are Quests, Bonds and Discoveries. They are not given Challenge ranks.
Health and Spirit are Progress Tracks for Health and what is usually called Stress.
Supply represents your preparedness, including food, water, fuel, weapons, ammo, equipment, cargo, money and general makeup. Basically all of the things you’d have think about if you were really doing the job, you can now have as a 0-5 Progress Task. Any time you need anything, just make a Check Your Gear roll. Adventure made effortless.
Some Assets - Starship and Companions for example, also have a 0-5 Progress Task.
Impacts are longer term effects that occur as a result of rolls. Misfortunes, Vehicle Troubles, Burdens and Lasting Effects. Impacts reduce the maximum Momentum you may have. Gamey enough for you?
Wounded, Shaken and Unprepared are the results of 0 Health, Spirit and Supplies.
Vehicle Troubles is Battered and Cursed. Battered can be repaired, Cursed can’t. Cursed looks like it only applies to Starships.
Burdens leave you Doomed, Tormented or Indebted. All of these send you on a new Quest. Boy, this sure reads like video game instructions.
Lasting Effects are Permanently harmed or Traumatized. Wounds that won’t heal. These states also affect your Momentum.
Assets are your stuff. Equipment. Crew. Talents. They sell a deck of cards for this because everything needed to know about them is reduced to the simplicity of a card. Each asset has 3 abilities, the starter ability and the abilities that can be gained with experience. Assets are command vehicle, modules, support vehicles, paths, companions and deeds.
Examples:
A starship is a command vehicle. Takes 5 damage.
A research lab (on a starship) is a module.
A support vehicle is a shuttle. Takes 4 damage.
A path is scavenger (a talent).
A glowcat is a companion. Takes 3 damage.
A homesteader is a deed (a home base).
These are all incredibly generic, despite having abilities that can ‘level up’. It essentially makes all starships and shuttles the same. I’m not really sure that fits science fiction very well. Of course, it could play fine depending on your players. GM’s could also easily modify the cosmetics so that players might never notice. I’d have to see it (in play) to believe it.
Assets are improved through experience points. But keep in mind there is nothing open-ended about this. Each asset has three and only three upgrades to it.
Equipment is handled abstractly. When you need equipment you make the Check Your Gear move. You either magically have it or magically don’t, no matter how ‘prepared’ you otherwise would be. What kind of equipment it is, is purely an on-the-fly decision. Vehicles are handled pretty much the same way.
Strangely on pages 66-67 is a full color ‘cutaway’ view of a starship. It is remarkable as a very ‘Firefly’ example of what can be done with a vague starship description.
The last pages of Chapter 1 The Basics is The Flow of Play. This defines the Strong Hit (success), Weak Hit (partial or costly success) and Miss (failure). I have quibbles with these results, but I assume that he designed them so that if a Move is made, basically the story keeps going no matter what.
Chapter 2 Launching Your Campaign starts with a bold statement. You don’t need to prepare for a session. In other words, just roll on a table and make it up as you go along. This might be fine for a solo game and it’s possible it could work in a co-op game, but I’ve never seen it work in a what they call “guided” game.
Now we get to ”Prioritizing Player Safety” which seems to be mandatory part of modern RPG rules now and its inclusion only shows that no sane human being should participate in this hobby.
The game is built on violence and blood. It is not supposed to be ‘safe’. If you feel you need to make it safe, you should simply find another hobby (TV is a popular choice).
If you are with friends that can possibly traumatize you, you need to remove those friends from your life.
If you are so fragile you could traumatize yourself in a solo game, you need to stop playing games and get serious help.
Personally I NEVER want to play a ‘safe’ game. A comfortable game is a boring game. Done well, RPG’s should never be boring.
I do realize that there are players (but especially GMs) who do make it hell to play with them. No amount of flags or dials or safety tools are going to fix assholes. If the didn’t get there by the time they are able to play games with other people there are no tools or conversation that will help. Just leave. You do yourself a favor and you do them a favor. Some will figure it out. Most won’t.
Choose Your Truths is about making your own personal Starforged universe. This is very definitely assumed to not be Star Trek or Star Wars but more like Firefly or… Firefly. There are no aliens. Technology is retro. Corporations and the government rule all.
This will actually be a series of tables you will roll on to create your own galaxy. Of course, there is always the ‘group exercise’ method. Personally, I’ve never seen this work. Most people don’t have enough imagination to make this interesting or simply don’t want to upset the applecart and the entire thing becomes a bland who cares.
Now rolling on the 1d3 tables for the campaign produces:
Cataclysm: The Sun Plague extinguished the stars in our home galaxy. We suspect the Sun Plague was caused by Superweapon run amok.
Exodus: Mysterious alien gates provided instantaneous one-way passage to the Forge.
”Communities” : We have made our mark on this galaxy, but the energy storms we call balefires threaten to undo that progress, leaving our communities isolated and vulnerable.
Iron: The Ironsworn bind their honor to iron blades.
Laws: Much of the settled domains are a lawless frontier. Criminal factions and corrupt leaders often hold sway.
Religion: Our faith is as diverse as our people.
Magic: Supernatural powers are wielded by those rare people we call paragons. These powers are born out of: Psychic Experimentation.
Communication and Data: In settled domains, a network of data hubs called the Weave allow near-instantaneous communication and data-sharing between ships and outposts.
Medicine: Orders of sworn headers preserve out medical knowledge and train new generations of caregivers.
Artificial Intelligence: Artificial consciousness emerged in the time before the Exodus, and sentient machines live with us here in the Forge.
War: Professional soldiers defend or expand the holdings of those who are able t o pay. The rest of us are on our own.
Lifeforms: Many sites and planets are infested by dreadful forgespawn. These aberrant creatures threaten to overrun other life in the galaxy.
Precursors: The Ascendancy, an advanced spacefaring empire, once ruled the entirety of the Forge. Vaults of inscrutable purpose are all that remain to mark the Ascendancy’s legacy, but those places are untethered from our own reality.
Horrors: The strange energies of the Forge give unnatural life to the dead. The Soulbinders are an organization sworn to confront these horrifying entities.
”Creating Your Character” starts character creation - on page 100.
I’m not going to bother creating a character or a sector. In the end they are both done with very vague bullet-points and that’s not the part of the system I’m interested in. I truly wonder what would happen if you tried to play an actual game with this much hand-waving.
”Gameplay in Depth” (insert your own joke here) is really what I’m interested in. How is this even supposed to work.
Session Moves is unusual in that it mechanizes things that I think are pretty obvious. Like “Beginning a Sessions”.
The comes the modern obligatory Move, Set A Flag. Sadly I understand this is necessary now because of the dramatic increase in a-holes over my lifetime. Basic decency is no longer something that can be assumed.
When Taking a Break and Ending a Session have to be “Moves” I question who they think the audience is?
”Adventures Moves” gets back to some common sense, though things like the Check Gear move make me roll my eyes. I forget my pistol? My rebreather? My vacc suit?
”Clocks” is one of those designs that was started by one game designer and everyone else slavishly copied it without ever stopping to think whether it really made any sense. Like Levels. And Classes.
For each and every example, and certainly for the game to make sense, you can keep track of all of these things as you would ”In real life” much easier than using ‘clocks’.
”Scene Challenges” simple detail the weird, vague and hand-wavey moves like Begin the Scene, Face Danger, Secure and Advantage and End the Scene. The explanation provides very little help in using them.
Principles of Play talks about the differences between Solo, Cooperative and Guided play. According to these descriptions there is not much difference between them.
”Chapter 4 Foes and Encounters” talks about building NPCs and seems to celebrate that since you mostly don’t have to have stat blocks for NPCs, they should be really easy to create. This sounds like creating NPCs was only a matter of creating their stat blocks and that without that - they can be just improvised on the fly easily. I don’t think it works that way. At least it shouldn’t.
”Sample NPCs” gives a full page to each example. Which means there are only 23 of them.
The first example is the monster from the Alien and Aliens moves. There’s not much else interesting to say about the creatures listed because they are not that interesting. Mechanically they are Hit Points and bullet lists they are completely free-form. When a Puppet Vine entangles a character with thorny vines, what happens? Who the hell knows, make it up as you go along. That may work for some people. But I’ve never met any of those people.
While the monsters are all colorfully described, they are only mechanically differentiated by how many dots they have for Health Points.
Space Dolphins are kind of cool, though.
”Chapter 5 Oracles” is all about the tables used in the games. And there are a lot of tables.
Descriptor + Focus is a the first pair of tables and they are supposed to go together a lot. I rolled “Sealed Lair” so that’s very doable.
”Exploring Planets” gives tables to describe planets in very broad (Star Wars like) terms. Each planet also has five tables to personalize it a bit more. It’s not deep but it’s a good start. Example: Outlands Furnace World: Marginally Breathable Atmosphere, No settlements, Can see Precursor Vault from space, Masses of scorched bones and roiling clouds of super-heated gas planet side. No life.
”Settlements” gives tables for places people live and follows the same generalized approach as planets. Example: Outlands Sector, Orbital, Population Hundreds, Industrial architecture, Hostile, No Authority/Lawless. Settlement Projects: Command. Trouble: Impending natural disaster, Strengthen Superstition. Name: Purgatory.
”Starships” does starship encounters.
”Characters” does NPCs.
”Creatures” has tables to create monsters.
”Factions” has tables to create factions.
”Derelicts” are tables for derelict spaceships or settlements. These include tables meant to be used while actively exploring them.
“Precursor Vaults“ are tables for finding lost stores of advanced technology.
”Location Themes” are tables for…atmosphere? Example: Mechanical. Machines single-mindedly executing a function or program. Automated weapon or trap is activated. Intelligent machine offers aid.
”Miscellaneous Oracles” has tables such as: Story Complication, Story Clue, Anomaly Effect and Combat Action.
And that is pretty much Starforged.
It’s claim that it can be a solo game, a cooperative game (everyone is the GM) or a GM’ed game seems completely dubious. Because most of the game is random rolls on tables. So as solo game it can work. As a cooperative game? I doubt it, but since the idea is so dumb I’ll never play it or every know anyone who will play it, I’ll reserve judgment.
But as a GM’ed game? If you think a fun game can be fun when entirely ruled by tables, then I wish you luck. I don’t believe it for a second - having played with GM’s who believe it.
So while it is an absolutely beautiful hard-backed book - and I might even use the tables when preparing an actual RPG sometime - I can’t imagine someone using this by itself to run a game. So presentation 5 and actual usefulness 1.
Honestly I think 3 stars is a little generous, but it suckered me into buying it.
So I bought it. We’ll see if its any clearer how it works now.
Like Starblazer Adventures I’m really mining it for ideas rather than inclined to play it. Of the 7 games it lists as inspiration, I already hate 4 of them.
Physically, it’s an absolutely gorgeous book, which definitely lessens the sting of buying it. Two ribbon bookmarks! 6x9 digest sized hardback (same size as Paleomythic).
The game uses ten-sided and six-sided dice. It also says you need asset cards which are really equipment cards. It also says you need the Starforged Playkit which as far as I know is just a set of blank forms to fill out your adventures on.
This game claims to be inspired by Firefly, Aliens, the Mandalorian, the Expanse, Guardians of the Galaxy and Battlestar Galactica (new not old!). How these all relate to each other I have no idea other than that the author likes them. I like them too but they seem to be completely different games if I were to base an RPG on them!
The Setting gives a page and a very rough outline which matches most science fiction settings: Terminus, Outlands, Expanse, and Void. Roughly Civilized, Colonies, Wilderness and Here Be Dragons.
Next it talks about the Mechanics and the Fiction and gives the usual BS about how the fiction comes first and then the dice rolls. This is just a stupid way to say the same thing RPG’s have been doing forever, but “We’re different because we use the word ‘fiction’ in front of the dice rolls!”. No. You’re not.
Next is the Iron Vow. I’m not sure where this comes from - I suspect the fantasy version of this game - which came first. It gives the idea that you swear on your tasks and are therefore driven to complete them. Not sure what this adds to the game frankly.
Your Character is basically your character sheet. There are five stats: Edge (Dexterity), Heart (Charisma), Iron (Strength), Wits (Intelligence) and Shadow (Wisdom, geared towards sneakiness).
Assets are your abilities, gear and stuff, all pre-packaged as cards. I suppose it makes sense money by selling the cards, but again it seems repackaging of traditional RPG stuff for no particular reason.
One thing that is very different from traditional RPGs are the ‘tracks’ you are expected to keep record of. These are all 10 check boxes called Quests, Bonds, Discoveries, Impact and Momentum. Health, Spirit and Supply are also ‘tracks’ but these function fairly similar to normal RPGs. Supply is a rather abstract measure of how prepared you are equipment-wise.
NPCs are dealt with as allies, companions, and connections. All pretty straightforward except they are all measure by a single stat - rank.
Making Moves describes boiler-plate situations and how they are resolved, depending on the dice roll. Some types of moves result in checking off progress tracks. Many f the move results require other move rolls. It notes that these are based on the Apocalypse World concept of moves, but these moves aren’t restricted by character class as most PBTA rules are. There are also moves that are made and applied to the entire group.
The Action Roll is the dice mechanism that uses 1 six-sided dice and 2 ten-sided dice. I find using ten-sided dice annoying considering there are only three results. A Strong Hit, A Weak Hit and a Miss. A ‘fumble’ or ‘critical success’ result occurs with a Match roll - both d10’s roll the same number. This can lead to special failures or successes. A Miss sends you to those Pay the Price Move.
Momentum is another ‘progress track’ but you’re only tracking lucky bonuses or penalties. Again, this doesn’t see to add anything to the game except increasing your chances to win if you’ve won or lose if you’ve lost. So if you didn’t use it at all… would it matter? This all seems very ‘board gamey’ to me. You can spend Momentum for die roll bonuses, which causes you to reset your Momentum back to +2. Negative Momentum will automatically hurt your die rolls. A whole lot of fiddly for die roll modifications that have absolutely nothing to do with story, action or drama. ‘Fiction first’ my ass.
Progress Tracks are another gamey mechanism that requires you to determine if your ‘Challenge’ is troublesome, dangerous, formidable, extreme or epic. This tells you how many tick marks it takes to cross one of ten boxes off that progress track. There are moves which gives you ticks on your Progress Track but the only example they give is the Take Decisive Action move, which tells me absolutely nothing.
There are also Legacy Tracks which just appear to be tedious way of gaining experience. There are Quests, Bonds and Discoveries. They are not given Challenge ranks.
Health and Spirit are Progress Tracks for Health and what is usually called Stress.
Supply represents your preparedness, including food, water, fuel, weapons, ammo, equipment, cargo, money and general makeup. Basically all of the things you’d have think about if you were really doing the job, you can now have as a 0-5 Progress Task. Any time you need anything, just make a Check Your Gear roll. Adventure made effortless.
Some Assets - Starship and Companions for example, also have a 0-5 Progress Task.
Impacts are longer term effects that occur as a result of rolls. Misfortunes, Vehicle Troubles, Burdens and Lasting Effects. Impacts reduce the maximum Momentum you may have. Gamey enough for you?
Wounded, Shaken and Unprepared are the results of 0 Health, Spirit and Supplies.
Vehicle Troubles is Battered and Cursed. Battered can be repaired, Cursed can’t. Cursed looks like it only applies to Starships.
Burdens leave you Doomed, Tormented or Indebted. All of these send you on a new Quest. Boy, this sure reads like video game instructions.
Lasting Effects are Permanently harmed or Traumatized. Wounds that won’t heal. These states also affect your Momentum.
Assets are your stuff. Equipment. Crew. Talents. They sell a deck of cards for this because everything needed to know about them is reduced to the simplicity of a card. Each asset has 3 abilities, the starter ability and the abilities that can be gained with experience. Assets are command vehicle, modules, support vehicles, paths, companions and deeds.
Examples:
A starship is a command vehicle. Takes 5 damage.
A research lab (on a starship) is a module.
A support vehicle is a shuttle. Takes 4 damage.
A path is scavenger (a talent).
A glowcat is a companion. Takes 3 damage.
A homesteader is a deed (a home base).
These are all incredibly generic, despite having abilities that can ‘level up’. It essentially makes all starships and shuttles the same. I’m not really sure that fits science fiction very well. Of course, it could play fine depending on your players. GM’s could also easily modify the cosmetics so that players might never notice. I’d have to see it (in play) to believe it.
Assets are improved through experience points. But keep in mind there is nothing open-ended about this. Each asset has three and only three upgrades to it.
Equipment is handled abstractly. When you need equipment you make the Check Your Gear move. You either magically have it or magically don’t, no matter how ‘prepared’ you otherwise would be. What kind of equipment it is, is purely an on-the-fly decision. Vehicles are handled pretty much the same way.
Strangely on pages 66-67 is a full color ‘cutaway’ view of a starship. It is remarkable as a very ‘Firefly’ example of what can be done with a vague starship description.
The last pages of Chapter 1 The Basics is The Flow of Play. This defines the Strong Hit (success), Weak Hit (partial or costly success) and Miss (failure). I have quibbles with these results, but I assume that he designed them so that if a Move is made, basically the story keeps going no matter what.
Chapter 2 Launching Your Campaign starts with a bold statement. You don’t need to prepare for a session. In other words, just roll on a table and make it up as you go along. This might be fine for a solo game and it’s possible it could work in a co-op game, but I’ve never seen it work in a what they call “guided” game.
Now we get to ”Prioritizing Player Safety” which seems to be mandatory part of modern RPG rules now and its inclusion only shows that no sane human being should participate in this hobby.
The game is built on violence and blood. It is not supposed to be ‘safe’. If you feel you need to make it safe, you should simply find another hobby (TV is a popular choice).
If you are with friends that can possibly traumatize you, you need to remove those friends from your life.
If you are so fragile you could traumatize yourself in a solo game, you need to stop playing games and get serious help.
Personally I NEVER want to play a ‘safe’ game. A comfortable game is a boring game. Done well, RPG’s should never be boring.
I do realize that there are players (but especially GMs) who do make it hell to play with them. No amount of flags or dials or safety tools are going to fix assholes. If the didn’t get there by the time they are able to play games with other people there are no tools or conversation that will help. Just leave. You do yourself a favor and you do them a favor. Some will figure it out. Most won’t.
Choose Your Truths is about making your own personal Starforged universe. This is very definitely assumed to not be Star Trek or Star Wars but more like Firefly or… Firefly. There are no aliens. Technology is retro. Corporations and the government rule all.
This will actually be a series of tables you will roll on to create your own galaxy. Of course, there is always the ‘group exercise’ method. Personally, I’ve never seen this work. Most people don’t have enough imagination to make this interesting or simply don’t want to upset the applecart and the entire thing becomes a bland who cares.
Now rolling on the 1d3 tables for the campaign produces:
Cataclysm: The Sun Plague extinguished the stars in our home galaxy. We suspect the Sun Plague was caused by Superweapon run amok.
Exodus: Mysterious alien gates provided instantaneous one-way passage to the Forge.
”Communities” : We have made our mark on this galaxy, but the energy storms we call balefires threaten to undo that progress, leaving our communities isolated and vulnerable.
That’s a weird ‘lighting strike’ type natural disaster that can ‘cut of trade routes and threaten entire empires’.
Iron: The Ironsworn bind their honor to iron blades.
Laws: Much of the settled domains are a lawless frontier. Criminal factions and corrupt leaders often hold sway.
Religion: Our faith is as diverse as our people.
Magic: Supernatural powers are wielded by those rare people we call paragons. These powers are born out of: Psychic Experimentation.
Communication and Data: In settled domains, a network of data hubs called the Weave allow near-instantaneous communication and data-sharing between ships and outposts.
Medicine: Orders of sworn headers preserve out medical knowledge and train new generations of caregivers.
Artificial Intelligence: Artificial consciousness emerged in the time before the Exodus, and sentient machines live with us here in the Forge.
War: Professional soldiers defend or expand the holdings of those who are able t o pay. The rest of us are on our own.
Lifeforms: Many sites and planets are infested by dreadful forgespawn. These aberrant creatures threaten to overrun other life in the galaxy.
Precursors: The Ascendancy, an advanced spacefaring empire, once ruled the entirety of the Forge. Vaults of inscrutable purpose are all that remain to mark the Ascendancy’s legacy, but those places are untethered from our own reality.
Horrors: The strange energies of the Forge give unnatural life to the dead. The Soulbinders are an organization sworn to confront these horrifying entities.
”Creating Your Character” starts character creation - on page 100.
I’m not going to bother creating a character or a sector. In the end they are both done with very vague bullet-points and that’s not the part of the system I’m interested in. I truly wonder what would happen if you tried to play an actual game with this much hand-waving.
”Gameplay in Depth” (insert your own joke here) is really what I’m interested in. How is this even supposed to work.
Session Moves is unusual in that it mechanizes things that I think are pretty obvious. Like “Beginning a Sessions”.
The comes the modern obligatory Move, Set A Flag. Sadly I understand this is necessary now because of the dramatic increase in a-holes over my lifetime. Basic decency is no longer something that can be assumed.
When Taking a Break and Ending a Session have to be “Moves” I question who they think the audience is?
”Adventures Moves” gets back to some common sense, though things like the Check Gear move make me roll my eyes. I forget my pistol? My rebreather? My vacc suit?
”Clocks” is one of those designs that was started by one game designer and everyone else slavishly copied it without ever stopping to think whether it really made any sense. Like Levels. And Classes.
For each and every example, and certainly for the game to make sense, you can keep track of all of these things as you would ”In real life” much easier than using ‘clocks’.
”Scene Challenges” simple detail the weird, vague and hand-wavey moves like Begin the Scene, Face Danger, Secure and Advantage and End the Scene. The explanation provides very little help in using them.
Principles of Play talks about the differences between Solo, Cooperative and Guided play. According to these descriptions there is not much difference between them.
”Chapter 4 Foes and Encounters” talks about building NPCs and seems to celebrate that since you mostly don’t have to have stat blocks for NPCs, they should be really easy to create. This sounds like creating NPCs was only a matter of creating their stat blocks and that without that - they can be just improvised on the fly easily. I don’t think it works that way. At least it shouldn’t.
”Sample NPCs” gives a full page to each example. Which means there are only 23 of them.
The first example is the monster from the Alien and Aliens moves. There’s not much else interesting to say about the creatures listed because they are not that interesting. Mechanically they are Hit Points and bullet lists they are completely free-form. When a Puppet Vine entangles a character with thorny vines, what happens? Who the hell knows, make it up as you go along. That may work for some people. But I’ve never met any of those people.
While the monsters are all colorfully described, they are only mechanically differentiated by how many dots they have for Health Points.
Space Dolphins are kind of cool, though.
”Chapter 5 Oracles” is all about the tables used in the games. And there are a lot of tables.
Descriptor + Focus is a the first pair of tables and they are supposed to go together a lot. I rolled “Sealed Lair” so that’s very doable.
”Exploring Planets” gives tables to describe planets in very broad (Star Wars like) terms. Each planet also has five tables to personalize it a bit more. It’s not deep but it’s a good start. Example: Outlands Furnace World: Marginally Breathable Atmosphere, No settlements, Can see Precursor Vault from space, Masses of scorched bones and roiling clouds of super-heated gas planet side. No life.
”Settlements” gives tables for places people live and follows the same generalized approach as planets. Example: Outlands Sector, Orbital, Population Hundreds, Industrial architecture, Hostile, No Authority/Lawless. Settlement Projects: Command. Trouble: Impending natural disaster, Strengthen Superstition. Name: Purgatory.
”Starships” does starship encounters.
”Characters” does NPCs.
”Creatures” has tables to create monsters.
”Factions” has tables to create factions.
”Derelicts” are tables for derelict spaceships or settlements. These include tables meant to be used while actively exploring them.
“Precursor Vaults“ are tables for finding lost stores of advanced technology.
”Location Themes” are tables for…atmosphere? Example: Mechanical. Machines single-mindedly executing a function or program. Automated weapon or trap is activated. Intelligent machine offers aid.
”Miscellaneous Oracles” has tables such as: Story Complication, Story Clue, Anomaly Effect and Combat Action.
And that is pretty much Starforged.
It’s claim that it can be a solo game, a cooperative game (everyone is the GM) or a GM’ed game seems completely dubious. Because most of the game is random rolls on tables. So as solo game it can work. As a cooperative game? I doubt it, but since the idea is so dumb I’ll never play it or every know anyone who will play it, I’ll reserve judgment.
But as a GM’ed game? If you think a fun game can be fun when entirely ruled by tables, then I wish you luck. I don’t believe it for a second - having played with GM’s who believe it.
So while it is an absolutely beautiful hard-backed book - and I might even use the tables when preparing an actual RPG sometime - I can’t imagine someone using this by itself to run a game. So presentation 5 and actual usefulness 1.
Honestly I think 3 stars is a little generous, but it suckered me into buying it.
January 19, 2023
Shawn Tomkin and his team did a great job writing and organising this book. I haven't had a chance to jump in and play yet, but just reading through the information was rewarding and inspiring on its own.
Looking through, the various design elements work together to clearly communicate what you need to know. It is an excellently prepared source book.
Looking through, the various design elements work together to clearly communicate what you need to know. It is an excellently prepared source book.
January 20, 2023
I've been excited for this one for a long time. I haven't started playing yet, but it looks like a solid, fine-tuned system for creating exciting adventures. I have to admit that a lot of the options for the setting didn't really excite me, but it's meant to be customizable so I can't take off any stars for that.
February 7, 2024
One of the clearest RPG manuals I've ever read. A really nicely conceived system, maybe a bit rules heavy at times, but probably a good into to PBTA style play for people coming from other games. I'm having fun using it solo as a writing exercise in Arabic, and I've had a lot of fun in Ironsworn and Starforged duets.
December 10, 2021
Solo RPG with a space setting? Sign me up! More seriously: I've initially found Ironsworn, and was enchanted by its simplicity. The only thing that was unappealing was the setting. And then I've found Starforged :)
May 6, 2023
A very solid iteration of the already incredible game Ironsworn set in space. Incredible systems to generate setting and space systems.
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