Ironsworn: Starforged
This week I'm running through a Starforged part-review part-actual play session.
Welcome to another session of "The Solo Mine", wherein I just try a bunch of different solo systems for fun and use them as fuel for storytelling.
This week, I'm doing Ironsworn: Starforged as a followup to my Ironsworn post, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite systems for doing solo play.
Alex Ward
Starforged has taken a lot of the great aspects of Ironsworn and adapted it to a space setting, while at the same time adding a lot of guidance that wasn't present in the first game. For example, here's a great quote from the Solo Play guidance in Starforged:
BE A FAN OF YOUR CHARACTER (STOP HITTING YOURSELF)
Here’s something unexpected: Solo players are hard on their characters. While a guide will moderate the severity of outcomes to keep everyone motivated and having fun, solo players often default to severe results when they suffer a cost or complication, grinding their character down through mechanical and narrative penalties. What’s more, they’ll envision these setbacks as inherent failings of the character, instead of factors out of their control.
There are some more paragraphs that follow with great advice, but I think this is a thing that occurs in the PbtA adjacent space, and carries an analog with learning how to make failure interesting. It's great to see it codified in the rules so succinctly.
Likewise, they've taken some elements that were introduced in Delve and have included them in the core rules for Starforged, I think? It's not a direct copy or anything it's more like "vibes".
So this time, let's introduce you to Lyric, our solo protagonist and some of her friends.
Setup for the Solo Session
Like other Ironsworn games, you must set up the Truths about your setting first, and since this is a new campaign, I've done that. Here are mine:
Campaign Truths
- Escaped War - AI
- There was an AI calamity, which caused our ancestors to flee
- Experimental FTL Drives - Fracturing of Reality
- They fled using experimental Faster than Life Drives, which may be breaking reality. (But there were also pre-FTL generation ships)
- Dangers abound - Safety in Numbers (Founder Clan Settlements)
- The population is a little scattered, but there are large population centers where the "Founder Clans" settled.
- Iron Blades
- We swear vows on iron blades. Lyric carries around an ancient athame for this purpose.
- Laws Enforced by the Covenant
- There's a Forge-wide series of laws which are generally accepted / enforced.
- Diverse Faiths
- We worship all kinds of gods, new and old.
- Rare Magic - Paragons - Magitech Augmentations
- Magic is real, but it's only wielded by those who have found arcanotech implants and can control them.
- Spacebound Couriers for Information
- Long-range communication is mostly impossible so we pass messages around by ship.
- Sworn Healers
- Healing technology is pretty solid and there are healer's guilds of all sorts. Lyric belongs to a quasi-religious guild known as the Order of the Boundless Heart.
- No AI - it was banned in the aftermath of the machine wars.
- Pretty self-explanatory, though there's probably some ancient AI out there somewhere.
- Security is provided Professional Soldiers and Mercenaries
- There's not a forge-wide army or anything, but there are a lot of mercenary corps.
- Forgespawn are Present
- Monsters are real, and they're dangerous.
- Vast Civilizations - Grubs / Scavengers Delve
- There once were others in the forge, many others. I wonder why so many civilizations have risen and fallen.
- Uncommon Horrors
- The dead don't stay dead, though it's uncommon enough that the common folk dismiss them as stories.
Now that those are decided, we have the basis for being able to make a character. Meet Lyric
Character Creation
Name: Lyric
Pronouns: She/Her
Callsign: Baba, after the Assyrian goddess of Healing (one of them anyhow)
Paths
Lyric is a Healer / Vestige - a member of the Order of the Boundless Heart.
This makes her better at healing, as well as able to better survive if she's close to death.
Backstory
A lost generation ship, sent out before the machine wars has finally arrived in the forge. Unfortunately, the only surviving passenger was Lyric - years of catastrophes slowly decimated the population, and Lyric was the last child born to the ship. Her parents died a few years before the ship reached the forge. The on-board AI kept the ship limping along until the final phase of the journey, finally failing days before arriving in the forge.
A group of salvagers found the floating hulk and were astonished to find the young Lyric tending to the graves of everyone who had died on the long journey. Among the group was a member of the Healer’s guild who offered to take Lyric in. She’d already spent the last several years tending to her parents, both of whom had been critically injured because of one of the ship’s many malfunctions - so it was a natural transition for her.
Years later, when looking through the archives, she discovered that there was another generation ship launched a few years after hers. She wants to find it, hoping that it fared better on the journey than hers did. So, her background vow is:
I will find the Generation Ship Valkyrie, and save anyone who is left to save.
Ship
Asclepius - Granted by the Healer Organization to aid in the search in exchange for helping any found in need. Light armaments for fighting.
Occasionally music will play faintly, like a dream. No source has ever been found.
Princess
Princess is a Glowcat (which is just an awesome idea). I'll paste the asset card here:
Gear
She carries a dagger upon which Iron Vows are sworn - it’s an Athame from Old Earth, passed down through the generations. Never used for cutting (unless self defense) - mysteriously untarnished.
Contacts
Rucks (Cauldron)
- Historian, Scruffy, Flashy - Greedy, Quirky. Must Avenge a Wrong.
Rucks is a man in his mid 30s, well-kempt with colorful clothing (most often a fine suit in various floral hues) but who pays no attention to his beard or hair.
An ancient ship dropped out out of a jump point near Cauldron, a semi-regular occurrence. Cauldron was set up to salvage the wrecks of ships that mysteriously show up here. This, however, was the oldest and largest ship that’s ever appeared.
Rucks was on one of the initial expeditions into the ship and has made several interesting discoveries. However, word got out and some powerful opportunists have arrived and shoved the locals (at Cauldron) out of being able to explore and salvage - with threat of force / violence. While there are more people at Cauldron, the spacers are more heavily armed.
Rucks is resentful that he’s not been able to come back, and he wants Lyric’s help. Specifically, he wants to sneak aboard the derelict, get some information back, and hopefully remove the spacers.
The Sector
Starforged, much like Ironsworn, has you create starting locations. Instead of settlements and paths, this is a sector in a star system.
I rolled interestingly, and only got deep space stations in my starting location. One of which is an exit point for FTL mishaps, so a small settlement has been established to salvage those. That's where we wind up starting.
And with that, we're ready to go!
Session Summary
The whole actual play segment will go live along with this post (and I'll link it shortly after the post goes live), so go have a read.
Overall, it was a lot of fun - I don't think it went quite as well as the Ironsworn Full transcript, but it was still a pretty solid start to a campaign I'd like to continue at some point.
Wrap Up
This was a lot of fun, and I'll likely do a follow-up soon, but I want to get back to the original Ironsworn campaign I started a few weeks ago, so that'll likely be the next post that goes up.
In the meantime, if you want to pick up a copy of Starforged...
It's also available on itch.io.