Failure 101: Learning How to Fail Whilst Playing Ironsworn

Welcome to Failure 101, a guide to learning how to fail whilst playing Ironsworn and other TTRPGs.
Matt Colville’s Many Fail States Video:
• Many Fail States | Run...
Cezar Capacle’s PUSH: capacle.itch.io/push / Patreon: / capacle
Come join my Patreon: patreon.com/thebadspotcast
Come find me on Twitter: @thebadspotcast
What’s that? You can download the original Ironsworn for free? I know, right? Get it here: www.ironswornrpg.com/

[@Max-sh6zu]

"Not everything needs to be a roll." Yeah. I wish I knew that before I got a horse stuck in a ditch. As the DM.

[@thebadspot]

Roll +horse

[@KesselRunner606]

My Glass Half Full on Misses is: Strong Hit: Nothing Exciting Happens Weak Hit: Something Exciting Happens Miss: Something *Really* Exciting Happens

[@thebadspot]

That’s a great way of looking at it!

[@seanwalsh1745]

In my solo Starforged game, my character was racing to stop a villain from wiping out an entire settlement when he wound up in a sword fight with a mysterious woman in black iron armour. My character was an amnesiac Lore Hunter with 1 Iron and no combat Assets, so I kept trying to escape and I kept rolling misses. I was making very little progress and the complications were piling up. After spending most of a session trying and failing, I decided I had had enough and made the Face Defeat move. There was no Vow involved in this fight, and prolonging it was costing time while the villain got away. The Lore Hunter sheathed his sword and conceded to his obviously superior opponent. She asked why he would tarnish his honour in combat, and he replied that innocent lives were more important than personal honour. I decided to try to Make a Connection, and rolled a Strong Hit. The woman in black was actually impressed by the Lore Hunter’s choice, and stopped the fight. However, her warrior code meant that because she had beaten him in combat, he now owed her a service. She tasked the Lore Hunter with travelling to an ice planet to sabotage her enemies, and she made him swear an Iron Vow to see it done. He is still working to fulfill that Vow, and has already found clues to his missing memories. He’s also kind of hoping to meet the woman in black again…

[@thebadspot]

That's an incredible bit of play! Thanks for sharing!

[@wishwellingtonsstuff]

Dude sick!

[@johne9181]

The quote about a miss being "What you don't want" is a really good way to look at it, and definitely gives a better narrative hook (Hopefully I'll remember that on the next miss)

[@thebadspot]

If you can, check out Push. It's a great system!

[@johne9181]

@@thebadspot Yeah, I downloaded it a few days before this video came out, but only had a glance through it. I'll take another look through it. (I've got no idea how, but I completely missed that the quote was from Push) I originally picked it up on the recommendation of a reddit thread for the agenda system. I've been trying to figure out why I wasn't excited about my Starforged campaign, and the agenda seemed like a good way to think about what I actually wanted to do on the adventures.

[@timbenton450]

Coming to this and Ironsworn a year later, but- this is great advice. I almost just killed off my first character as a result of a couple double misses. A Lich appeared and should have killed me. Instead, it carved some invisible symbols into my head and a few days later I am trying to discover what is happening to me while my humanity slips away AND I’m trying to save my tribe. Now it’s one of the most interesting character I’ve ever played, thanks to failures.

[@thebadspot]

The greatest teacher, failure is.

[@drzachary]

Poor Uncle Artiga! This feels like my first Ironsworn game - and so many others, I’d bet. I second what others have said about misses, which is the singular largest design flaw (imo) in games like D&D, where a miss means the situation simply does not change. To add to the idea of misses being opportunities, this is true even when the cascade of failures has converted your hero into a corpse. Those carcasses can be worldbuilding fertilizer, enriching the narrative for future endeavors. My first game ended in a miss with a match on a Face Death roll. I decided that the match meant that the failure was even greater: the villain took credit for my character’s deeds and became a whispered about heroic figure. They even renamed the town after them. Exposing their true nature led to a lot of satisfying story for the next generation of heroes!

[@thebadspot]

I love that!

[@simontodd9631]

This sums up EXACTLY what my first go at Ironsworn was like, and I've struggled to have another go since. It was failure cascade at the extreme: Investigating a friends disappearing saw me break into their longhouse. I failed to pick the lock, so had to force entry. I failed to gather information which left me dead-ended for clues. Another series of fails saw me blamed for my friends disappearance based solely on me being seen forcing entry to their longhouse. Failure to persuade the relevant authorities of my intentions saw me imprisoned. At that point I wrote the entire thing off. Over the course of 1-2 hours I think I failed almost every roll and my penalties were brutal. I'm looking to start a new game and this video is the single best advice video i've seen - many thanks.

[@thebadspot]

Hey hey, thanks for watching! Yes, it's a common thread I see new players talking about, but when it click, it clicks! So glad this video was of some use to you and I hope your future games are as awesome as they can be!

[@HeadHunterSix]

It doesn't come up the same way in Ironsworn/Starforged, but combining those last two pieces of advice, "a miss should never mean 'nothing happens', otherwise there was no point of a roll in the first place." In Starforged, I look at every miss as an opportunity to develop the narrative. "What can make the story even more interesting?". Success can be interesting and exciting, but a story without risk is one without conflict or uncertainty.

[@thebadspot]

100%

[@MrVansR]

If only there was some way to include this video with every copy of ironsworn. Thanks for the excellent video

[@thebadspot]

No worries, hope you got something out of it!

[@capacle]

Great video and thank you for the kind mention! I’m glad Push resonated with you.

[@thebadspot]

No, thank you!

[@xionkuriyama5697]

Learned this lesson hard last night. My first journey of the game got off to a bad start when a matching miss led to me getting in a costly fight with a sodden where I was rolling miss after miss and I barely escaped with my life. I rolled another Undertake a Journey to get the hell out of there... and rolled another miss. With matching 10s. I tried to roll with it, but the story had gotten so derailed by that point that now I'm just gonna start over. Failure cascade is real!

[@thebadspot]

Yeah, it has happened to the best of us. I watched a stream once where the guy just stopped after his 10th miss in a row or something and just said "you know what, I'm just going to wind this back and scrub the last 30 mins, have a do over". And It can get like that very easily if you don't keep your failures under control. Thanks for sharing!

[@user-nq6nl4ot5c]

Thanks for the tips and advice! I did almost exactly the same thing as you! First quest was to rescue some people from Raiders, rolled a miss and decided the Raiders had left some people back to guard them from being followed, went into a combat encounter and got hammered. Cue planning reset and start again! Incidentally I'd set my character up almost identically to yours too (but I took the raven companion rather than Spirit Bound - with a view to adding Spirit Bound later when I Advance).

[@thebadspot]

No worries, glad I could help!

[@hughboorman]

Yup, really helpful, Matt, thanks. Recognising that a miss is "You get what you don't want" and an opportunity rather than a failure will make such a difference. Mind you, you had some serious awful dice rolling. I can understand why you changed to using the app!

[@hughboorman]

Currently, I'm having the opposite problem. I'm rolling strong hits, twice recently with matches, and my Ironsworn character is strolling through life without any problem.

[@thebadspot]

Yeah it was a rough start and a big part of the reason I went 43322 on the stats for the Starforged Campaign.

[@thebadspot]

Must be terrible!

[@pawgarrett4201]

Your intelligence and eloquence are greatly appreciated. Your Starforged description vids are abfab. :) Thanks, Mr. Risby!

[@thebadspot]

Why thank you!

[@thesudaneseprince9675]

Compulsory watching for solo players - thank you!

[@thebadspot]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@benjamingagne8]

Great advice! I don't remember who's video it was, but I also really like the idea of every other miss is a mechanical one. It forces you to think about narrative outcomes for you misses way more whilst keeping it dangerous and stressful

[@thebadspot]

That’s fun! Thanks for watching!

[@davidleary8223]

Great insights, and this was a really worthwhile watch. As I've dipped in and out of solo Ironsworn over the last couple of years, I came to some of these same realizations. The game only gets better and better the more I play and my understanding grows.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks for watching! It is definitely something that I've had to persist with - as this video illustrates - but the magic that comes out when it all clicks is worth the effort!

[@RevRaak]

This is super helpful! Thank you for the example, first, and for debriefing it with us, second. Love the focus on having had fun, the wisdom to say it wasn't wrong, and the retrospective tour of what could have been done with more experience. And that third point, to look for narrative complications more than mechanical punishments, seems like the biggest hurdle to overcome when coming from more traditional rpg's (D&D). It's way more interesting and generative to think: "You get what you *don't* want." Excellent, excellent video!

[@thebadspot]

Thanks so much for watching and I'm glad you got something out of it. You get what you don't want blew it wide open for me!

[@johnsteidl293]

This is such great advice - although I confess the idea of treating RPGs as Roguelikes ("I reset and started again") really had me chuckling. Love your stuff - please keep it up!

[@thebadspot]

Haha, yes this was my only reset and start again. But maybe that's an idea for an Edge of Tomorrow/Groundhog Day style campaign. Every morning Tio awakes, swears his vow and dies, each time getting closer and closer to the truth...

[@wishwellingtonsstuff]

This was really uselfull. I've just started playing, but i certainly have had a faliure cascade. It was super discouraging. I eneded up taking a break, going back a bit and resuming before set of bad decisions, making better choices about my sucesses and failures. 😊

[@thebadspot]

Thanks for watching! Yes, the tailspin can be very hard to pull out of once you start. We’ve all been there and it just takes a bit of practice to figure out. Good luck in your games!

[@shaneintheuk2026]

This is definitely the first video new players should watch. It’s excellent work and I’m going to use the link regularly on FB. One thing I point out is that with a 2 stat a miss is equally likely to a strong hit. If you make misses catastrophic then your game is going to be short. I wonder if there’s enough material for a follow up video on how to interpret strong hits. There’s a temptation to just take a plus 1 and move on.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks Shane! Maybe that is a future video for sure. I never take a +1 unless it's from an asset or Secure and Advantage, but I often will carry a strong hit forward narratively. Just make a little note that you're owed and then work it into the story in the future. I've banked plenty of those in the past. It's better than shoehorning something into the story that doesn't belong just because the dice told me to!

[@shaneintheuk2026]

@@thebadspot you inspired me to start a new adventure and I’ve been using your tips to Fail Forward. After four straight misses my character has accidentally blown up a McGuffin, sworn vengeance on the police and started a war. Doh!

[@ClockworkBard]

Even as someone with decades of GM experience and an abundance of live practice with these concepts, these examples are still immensely helpful reinforcement. Thank you muchly.

[@thebadspot]

That’s so cool, thanks for watching!

[@jimjones7980]

Matt's videos are definitely worth the watch. This was a good overview of how to make failure interesting. I do appreciate the maximum that failure is an opportunity to get what you don't want and not a failure to get what you want.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks so much for the kind words!

[@dcouturier2]

Tio's story earned the like for me. I have loved your short stories.

[@thebadspot]

Thank you so much!

[@dziooooo]

Rewatching this video, I might be introducing Ironsworn to a new player soon and this is a great resource to understand how this game is supposed to go. My first ever game of Ironsworn ended in a failure cascade, at the end of which my character got lost in the woods and eaten by wolves. 😅 For the next one I learned, and when I got to the point of repeated failure, I had my character saved by a swamp hag. I skipped forward in time and jumped back in with reaource tracks reset, and my character burdened by a deal she made with a hag - in exchange for this rescue, she promised to kill a mystic she hoped to learn from. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to get out of this deal without having my soul devoured! Much more satisfying than "oh well, I guess I'm dead".

[@thebadspot]

“Oh well, I guess I’m dead” probably sums up a lot of people’s first games

[@julians.2597]

@@thebadspot yeah xD, my poor battle-hardened blademaster beaten to death by a single, unarmed drunkard 😅

[@thebadspot]

@julians.2597 RIP

[@PedroJuanFerrerMatoses]

Super interesting video, I think that we all should reflect on past experiences and be more «critical» with what happened then and what have we learnt in the way! Thanks a lot! BTW the main NPC of the first campaign I played was called Tio Artiga (uncle Artiga in Spanish) 😝

[@thebadspot]

Thanks so much fro watching!

[@colerape]

Brilliant. Cheers!

[@thebadspot]

Hope it helped!

[@artistpoet5253]

Asmund attempts to compel a raving raider refugee from a near-by settlement that it would be better to return in numbers to rescue any other survivors so he agrees to go it alone. Several more failed rolls later reveal that the raiders were actually hunters from the settlement. These hunter-raiders had been possessed by a corrupted Iron Pillar found in the Deep Woods. The game took about a dozen sessions and has now formed the backdrop for a Witcher style campaign. Asmund nearly died eight times but had he succeeded in that first roll, I might not have had one of my most entertaining RPGs yet.

[@thebadspot]

This system is so good. Thanks for sharing!

[@tylerh2548]

The doobledoo returns!!!

[@thebadspot]

Everyone loves a doobledoo!

[@lergof0202]

I’ve found that when you hit that 4-5 miss in a row and it doesn’t narratively make sense to keep going it’s time to face defeat. I was fighting a radioactive giant snake Queen in her cavern lair and after miss 5 in a row with making 0 progress towards achieving my objective I decided that instead of continuing to endure harm possibly face death it was time to face defeat and make this narratively complicated. I had my character get see and dive for a small hole in the cave floor that he could escape through but was to small for the giant snake to follow. Right before squeezing through though he got bitten by a radioactive poison bite. I decided to make a tension clock for how long before the snake poison takes effect. Now my character is lost in the underground caves, with a clock ticking on poison taking effect while also having a giant snake Queen roaming somewhere around. Can he find his way back to settlement before the poison takes effect. I’ll play to find out. I took miss number 5 as a sign that unless I wanted this character to die here, something narrative was going to have to happen to add complications to the story. This is what I thought of on the fly because I didn’t want the character to die.

[@thebadspot]

Sometimes it makes perfect sense to cut your losses. Thanks for sharing!

[@IAcePTI]

Realy good advices. My hardest fail was in Ironsworn Campain to. My PC was suposed to train some soldiers but they ended up been atacked by some money monsters, the things went só bad that the solution i gave for my PC with 0 health was laying down and fake as if he was dead. He ended up ear everyone getting killed. In the next morning when he wake up i just rolled for some sealth action, trying to excape from the monkeys that are there eating some corps... And Lucky me failed again. Instead of making me suffer more dmg or any mechanic penalty instead i just sayed that 2 of that monsters see me and start making Moisés calling for the others. I could varely excaped and gave my PC some "rest" by enter in some cave and he make the entrance to colapse. Then after he encounter some pixie trive that let him soujourn.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks for watching! And that does sound like a hard fail indeed!

[@LD-gc4qg]

Very good formulated advices!

[@thebadspot]

Thanks for watching!

[@jshud3]

Fantastic advice... thank for the story and the lessons!

[@thebadspot]

Glad you found it useful! Stay tuned for more from Tio very soon!

[@Burnthas]

Great video. Failure casquade is deffinitly what happend to me when first trying solo games. I just keept rolling cause I didnt really know how to narritivly GM myself.

[@thebadspot]

Thanks! Yeah, it's a trap that is very easy to fall into. Hope this helps!

[@drunkendelver1966]

I just started a solo Ironsworn game. Here's what I've got so far. Ishana Giliana is the only surviving inhabitant of the village of Stormbreak, a settlement at the foot of Tempest Mountain. While she was out hunting, the village was destroyed and the inhabitants slaughtered, seemingly by a band of raiders. However, she notices that their corpses are also among the dead. A disheveled, frightened traveler named Griff approaches from one of the ruined houses, saying that a monster attacked the town while the raiders attempted to take the town's resources, leaving only him alive, as he was hidden away. Ishana recalls an old story about an unnamed creature rumored to call Tempest Mountain home, and how the town's settlers were told by an indigenous elf that the area was unsafe. She swears an iron vow to learn the nature of this creature and slay it. She now travels with Griff, hoping to find more information about the creature. She is currently held at arrow-point by a couple of men after she attempted to help a downed condor, apparently laid as bait for a trap of some kind. Keep in mind that the roll made when investigating the area which yielded this result was a strong hit with matches on the challenge dice. Perhaps these men could be potential allies, or maybe going back to their camp with them may yield some pertinent information or a new avenue to pursue her goal. Out of curiosity, how would you handle this situation? I want to compare to what happens next for me.

[@thebadspot]

A strong hit with a match should definitely reap dividends for your characters. Not only should they be able to give some important information, about the beast, it should be trustworthy and save you a roll later down the line. That is how I like to think about it. Good luck tracking it down!

[@GrayGeist]

Love your videos, very much - thank you for them Matt! No feedback other than one thing - your mic is very low compared to nearly every other YT video I watch. The quality is great, but the volume is extremely low. I ran some tests versus other videos that consisted of me playing them on my phone and iPad, in the kitchen at X-feet away versus others and it is way low. I then tested it on PC with extremely high quality headphones, and though it's certainly manageable, the same applies. 🎙🎤🔈🔉🔊

[@thebadspot]

Thanks so much for the kind words and for the feedback. I have had some pretty annoying audio issues in the past. More recently I've done a lot to amend this and when I'm mixing and exporting the audio, it says I'm hitting the right levels, so I don't really know what is up with that. I'll certainly keep on trying to make the quality as best as I can!

[@carpelo]

What a great presentation, thanks for your thoughts, now I'm willing to roll a miss 😜

[@thebadspot]

Reject the hit, embrace the miss...