6 Top Tips for Playing Ironsworn | Solo RPG

6 top tips for playing both Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged by Shawn Tomkin. Matt is joined this week by Steve Morrison of the amazing Errant Adventures podcast, which you can check out here: www.errantadventurespod.com/
Support the show by joining our Patreon: / thebadspotcast
Come find me on twitter: @thebadspotcast
Did you know you can download the original Ironsworn for free? I know, right? Get it here: www.ironswornrpg.com/

[@KesselRunner606]

Number One Rule: Learn to Love Misses. For example: Indiana Jones journeys through the jungle, rolls a Strong Hit and reaches the ancient temple without incident. He rolls a strong hit and makes his way safely through the tunnels and enters the shrine. He rolls another strong hit and successfully bypasses the foot traps and reaches the idol. Another strong hit and he gets the idol without triggering any traps, retraces his steps and makes his way out. One more strong hit, and he and his faithful companions make their way back to the river and the airplane without incident, and the idol in his possession. All nice strong hits. Not one Miss in there.

[@thebadspot]

Absolutely!

[@odolowa1]

Learning to fail is a big one. I remember how my initial vow slowly devolved into me trudging through the Deep Wilds, my “guide” on my back, no supply or hp, and racing a warband back to my home village. It was at this point I decided to look into why my game was so freaking hard.

[@thebadspot]

Absolutely. If you're not mindful of how to manage failure, you can very easily get caught in this tailspin of mechanical penalties and narrative complications that is very hard to pull out of. Thanks for watching!

[@spattz280]

I had a similar experience with a similar plot except I was racing to the next village to warn them of approaching raiders. I arrived with no supply and no hp. Even with a sojourn I only earned 2 hp back. So hard to recover from. However, I learned so much from the experience.

[@redcup217]

My biggest tip be that it's your game. If you change or ignore a rule, nobody is going to yell at you. If it's more fun of a game to play without a rule or with a modified rule, do it!

[@thebadspot]

Absolutely!

[@bradpitt9428]

The Golden Rule of TTRPG

[@scourneene]

I couldn't understand combat in this game, I'm going to do mods. Otherwise I love it. I let my misunderstanding of combat stop me from playing but like I said I'll make a mod cause I love the storyline I came up with and want to see were it goes. Great tips guys...nice hearing about your game play and experiences.

[@munkholt]

Careful not to solve a Weak Hit with a new vow too often. It's easy to get lost on your own story, or lose focus. Also, you don't have to make vows needlessly difficult; you can still have a Formidable opponent as the climax of a Troublesome quest.

[@thebadspot]

That's a great one! I think in OG Ironsworn I had 5 Iron Vows running at one point. It becomes a knotted tangle of plot and tangents and it's tough to pull yourself out of.

[@bjornprompeler9424]

My tip is "start playing!" and stop only watching others play - but I am very bad at following my own advice... So I hope I will start soon 🤣😭🙄😁

[@thebadspot]

Excellent advice! It’s exactly what I did!

[@writeheroics7490]

Join the dots is so key! It is like cooking. You can head into the unknown and throw some random ingredients into the pot and it may be, meh, or accidentally "good". But if you find that needed ingredient that synergizes with the others and connects them together, then that is a meal to be enjoyed and savored.

[@thebadspot]

Absolutely!

[@hideshiseyes2804]

Just played my first session and had a great time. Randomly generated a character and a scenario. Thanks for the tips, very helpful!

[@matthewward4636]

Great tips another one to remember that helps me with solo is that nothing is set in stone until your character/s interact with it. Building a whole world or having a full story in your head will only complicate things and make you doubt the flow of the game and the oracle rolls

[@thebadspot]

Absolutely! Gotta keep it loose! Thanks for watching!

[@GrungefolkBoy2010]

#5 I did this the other day, I'm trying to clear my name for a murder I didnt commit, through random rolls it turns out the victim was a girl called Maura, later a person joins me in fighting some creatures, rolled this random persons name as Mira, just because the names where similar, asked the Oracle and sure enough, turns out to be the victims mother! Was so cool😁 great tips for a beginner like me👍

[@thebadspot]

So glad you’re getting some use out of these tips! Thanks for watching!

[@owenbartrop8963]

lol thats pretty cool :D

[@skiddwister9143]

These are excellent tips. If I hadn't watched a handful of Me, Myself, and Die episodes before I saw this video, I think much of your advice would have been lost on me. Trevorl Devell uses all of your advice every week. This tells me that your advice is born out of many experiences. Without your advice, I can see new players giving up. It's tough soloing an entire world alone. There is nothing to fall back on except your imagination. So, your advice is a, "You've got this, guys!" pat on the back. Thanks for this episode.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks so much for watching! Glad you found it useful. Encouraging new players is exactly what I want to do!

[@fedev80]

Thank you specially for tip #4, is comforting to know that other even more skilled or experienced people have the same struggle that I have :)

[@thebadspot]

We’ve all been there! Thanks for watching!

[@Rich_H_1972]

Mine, and I suppose it's very similar to learning to fail, is to not paint yourself into a corner. Always give yourself options - try not to be too binary in how you develop the story. Yes, you have to be binary when asking the Oracle(s) questions but those shouldn't mean you run out of things to do. Related, maybe a sub-tip, would be to not overuse the Oracle(s); which I think is self-explanatory but does tie into not painting yourself into a corner.

[@thebadspot]

Also a good one!

[@DuncanFx]

Just getting into Ironsworn myself (finally!) and these are all great tips. Can already see how they will help me improve the experience. Thanks for sharing!

[@thebadspot]

I’m so glad you’ve found them useful! I hope your campaign is everything you hope it will be!

[@HeadHunterSix]

I've previously worked with _Five Parsecs From Home_ and I think that experience will help me with _Starforged_ . I have always thought the most important thing with solo/narrative roleplaying is to find the way to adapt the random narrative results to form a cohesive story.

[@thebadspot]

I’ve really wanted to try 5PFH for a while. I hear it’s awesome.

[@HeadHunterSix]

@@thebadspot It's great fun. There's a bit of miniatures battles to be had in each session but otherwise it's got a fairly similar premise.

[@frankietaylor342]

Wonderful tips for a great game! Thanks!

[@thebadspot]

Thank you! I hope these tips help new players find their way through the game.

[@JennerNuwen32]

Thede are incredibly useful tips that I will definitely keep in mind as I explore Starforged. I just picked it up, and am also a fairly green solo TTRPG person, so these were very helpful indeed. I would say that the thing I've struggled the most with in Starforged so far is setting a background vow that works for me and fits with how the game system seems to envision it. At first I picked something that turned out to be at most a 2 session quest, and then I realized this needed to be something much more weighty. Then I started to feel stressed about picking something that was appropriately large and yet free-form to allow my character to breathe and explore the universe.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks so much for watching and I'm glad you found the tips useful. Background vows can be tricky because you sort of don't want to thinking about them, but you do want them bubbling away. A delicate balance to strike. When I first played OG Ironsworn I was trying so hard to tie everything to the background vow it just became hard work!

[@AtrusGambit]

These are really good, non-generic tips!!!

[@thebadspot]

Thanks for watching! Hopefully these tips will be of some use to new players.

[@bertman4]

Great tips!

[@thebadspot]

Hope they help new players and frustrated players alike!

[@rykard72]

Lots of great advice. Would love to see a video on how you run your campaign and what you use to track all the different paths. Do you write everything down or use certain computer programmes like Roll20 etc? Any tips on this would be welcome. Love the podcast 👍

[@thebadspot]

Great idea! I may do a video like this when I next stop for a break, which should be in November some time. Thanks for watching!

[@antondovydaitis2261]

Thank you.

[@thebadspot]

You're welcome!

[@ARKavli]

I'll say that I've had trouble with the learning to fail. Not only do I tend to be simulationist in nature, but I end up suffering decision fatigue when I try to come up with unique and interesting complications for the 70% rolls being Weak Hits. So sometimes, I just ignore it or -1 Momentum with little narrative description. I have edited out some of my more frustrated comments in my play through videos. :)

[@thebadspot]

It's a tough one, for sure and it certainly took me a while to get my head around. Have you ever played the FFG Genesys system? That one is a nightmare to play because the complications on your rolls are supposed to have unique narrative consequences, but there's such a wide range of results to interpret it ends up being absolutely exhausting.

[@ARKavli]

@@thebadspot I looked at Genesys some time back, but the specialized dice kind of turned me off. Anything beyond the +/- of Fudge dice, and it's too much for my poor, aging brain. I don't even like anything besides D6 and D10 these days. :)

[@thebadspot]

Yeah, it seems like a good system at first look (it was also the first proper RPG that I played), but it's so full of holes and edge cases that DMing it quickly becomes a thankless task.

[@jarodnole4618]

@@thebadspot I actually bought all of the Genesys books (read through the entire first rulebook) and after finding a free RPG day beginners trial session for Genesys i took a serious look at it and decided that it was unplayable for me. It had bunches of five star reviews but in the end its style exhausted me more than not and left me idea bankrupt. The vagueness of the dice just wasnt for me. Decision fatigue is a big thing with me and keeps me from soloing any game, (sometimes even computer games) any chance you'll make a video on how to get around decision fatigue?

[@thebadspot]

Hi Jarod, thanks for watching! Stay tuned for my next campaign break (late November) where I'll be making some more content like this with tips for solo games and general GM tips. Genesys is one of those systems that looks great on paper, but it also can be totally exhausting. My best experiences with it have been when the players are all interpreting the dice too. That is a good way to do it, but ultimately they're all just mixed successes to varying degrees and having to divine that from all the symbols on the dice can be time consuming. And there are so many fringe cases too, with the dice throwing up some very strange results that ultimately just get fudged and you move on. This is why I love PbTA games so much. Fail, succeed, mixed success. It's all you need!

[@soumyajyotimukherjee4752]

About to play my first Ironsworn campaign. These tips will help 👍

[@thebadspot]

I'm so glad you have found something of use here! Good luck with your campaign!

[@theHiddenStone]

Good to hear you two teaming up! Any chance of a co-op at some point?

[@thebadspot]

I'm saying nothing...

[@zombiegaming5492]

I need help starting and getting into that groove. I've bought the cards and books but can't get myself to sit down and just do it.

[@thebadspot]

Honestly I was the same. That first step is definitely the hardest and it was one that took a long time for me to take.

[@DavidVanmeterDutch]

I have been playing a lot of Tunnels and Trolls, or as I call it, Dark Souls in print form! So, I am all too familiar with failure!! But, this was great as I just bought Ironsworn and all the related material except starforge. So knowing a few things in advance will definitely help!! Thanks!

[@thebadspot]

Hey no worries! Have fun.

[@TheDiazDarkness]

These are helpful. I want to try to use Ironsworn to run my own setting that I have invented, and want to learn the rules before home brewing the rules for a freeform magic system that I use for it. I ran a test a few months back, but want to give it an actual try now. Thanks for the tips.

[@thebadspot]

No worries! Hope the system works for your setting. Sounds cool.

[@jayzinski4381]

This video is great! Anyone who even has just a passing interest in Ironsworn needs to watch this video. Great stuff yet again Bad Spot. ALL ABOARD THE TRAIN TO 500 SUBS, CHOO CHOO! 🚂

[@thebadspot]

500 seems so close. At the beginning I thought 200 was an unattainable target, but here we are. Thanks for your support!

[@jayzinski4381]

@@thebadspot Always!

[@jayzinski4381]

@@thebadspot HAPPY 500 SUBS BAD SPOT!!!

[@thebadspot]

Honestly never thought I’d get half that number. Totally overwhelming!

[@jayzinski4381]

@@thebadspot You've earned it, my guy!

[@totallymojo]

Title should be "Top 6 tips for playing Ironsworn SOLO". Honestly, I've never encountered anyone playing this game with a gm lol

[@thebadspot]

Yeah, it’s just not really designed for that style of play. Co-op and solo is where it really shines. Thanks for watching!

[@Tampahop]

#6 Steal from your favorite media. I'm playing co-op with two other players. We are on a world with changing environment. I ask "What happens?" One player says "It gets dark." The other player says "It's an eclipse." I say "Pitch Black." Everyone groans as the first monstrous flyers swoop in.

[@thebadspot]

It's a great shorthand!