Introduction
Hello, and welcome to Tales of the Ironlands, an actual-play podcast following my solo playthrough of a campaign in the role playing game called Ironsworn. I’m your host, Will. This short episode is here to introduce new listeners to the basics of Ironsworn, so that the episodes that follow will make a bit more sense.
Ironsworn is tabletop role playing game. In case you’re not familiar with that type of game, think of “Dungeons and Dragons,” which is the oldest and best known example of the genre. In a game like this, players create characters and then assume the identity of those characters as they play through an adventure.
In the course of pursuing the story, the players are always free to try anything they can imagine; but whether they succeed or not is determined by two things: their character’s abilities, and the whims of fate as represented by rolling some dice. For example, suppose a character must navigate a rickety rope bridge: a dextrous character with good balance stands a better chance of successfully crossing it than a strong but clumsy character. But if the dextrous character rolls poorly, they could still fail; and the clumsy character could still succeed, if they roll well.
Ironsworn uses three dice to determine the results of an action. Two of these are the “challenge dice.” They have ten sides, and rolling them reveals the two numbers you are trying to beat. The third die is a standard six-sided die, called the “action die.” You roll it, and add a bonus from your character’s relevant game statistics. Finally, you compare the number from your action die and any bonuses to the number on the challenge dice.
If you beat both, you succeed with ease, and may get some bonus or reward. If you only beat one, then you generally succeed, but at some cost or with difficulty. And if you don’t beat either one, well, you’ve failed, and there will be some price to pay.
Let’s give a short example. Suppose we have a character named Sven, who is trying to figure out why people have been disappearing from the poor part of the town he lives in. He starts asking around, looking for leads. This would be a “Gather Information” check. He rolls his dice and adds +2 from his Heart ability score, which represents his courage and force of personality. Suppose he rolls a 6 on his action die, for a total 8, and rolls a 3 and a 5 on his challenge dice. That’s a strong hit! He finds some clues.
If Sven had rolled just a 1 on his action die, for 3 total, then he would fail to beat the 3 and 5. Not only does he not find information, but maybe he has some other problem. Perhaps he gets mugged.
And if he rolled a 2 on the action die, for a total of 4, then he has beaten one of the challenge dice (the 3), but not the other. In this case he finds the information, but there is a complication. Maybe he discovers that the person behind the disappearances is his own sister, Aud. What is she doing? And what does he do about it? Does he try to talk to her? Report her to the authorities? Sneak around to learn more about what’s going on? In this way, the dice add randomness and complications to the story.
Lastly, I should note three other things very briefly.
First, Ironsworn has a mechanic called “Momentum”, which fluctuates over time. If you have enough, it can be “burned” to improve your results at key moments. So when you hear me talking about momentum, that’s what’s at stake.
Second, quests and goals are tracked using progress bars. When I talk about “marking progress,” it means filling up a few notches on a progress bar. The exact amount of progress depends on how difficult the goal is.
And finally, I will often “Ask the Oracle” a question. This means rolling some dice to answer a question about the world, or provide some inspiration as to what is going on by picking a word from a table of possible outcomes. In a group game, this role would be performed by a game master, but because this is a solo game, we are instead relying on dice and charts.
There are many more details, but that’s the gist of it. If you’re interested in learning more about the game mechanics, the entire system is available for free from IronswornRPG.com. Thanks for taking the time to listen to this intro. I hope you enjoy the game!