darchildre: the outline of a 20-sided die over a faded rainbow on a black background (d&d time!)
Hey, if any of you have read my Ironsworn/Starforged posts in the past and thought, "Those seem like cool games", they are currently on sale until the end of the month. (Only the digital version of Starforged, but both digital and print versions of everything else.)

They are extremely good games - probably my favorite rpgs - and the books/cards are gorgeous. And the digital edition of Ironsworn is still free, if you want to take a look at it before spending actual money.
darchildre: a crow being held in one hand.  text:  "bird in hand" (bird in the hand)
Things:

- I have had the stupidest cold for nearly a week now. I call it the stupidest cold because I'm sick enough to feel off and to have mild but irritating symptoms, but not sick enough to actually feel like I shouldn't do things. Also because it spent about three days in the "sniffles and sore throat" stage without progressing. Fortunately, it feels like I've reached end-stage cold symptoms now, so hopefully it will be gone soon.

- I finished my handsewn shirt - it came out pretty okay! - and now I'm excited to make more clothing. Much like when I learned to knit, I find that now that I have some initial knowledge and experience, there is a part of my brain that has immediately decided that I am obviously capable of sewing anything. Textile crafts are the only area of my life in which I have this kind of boundless confidence in my abilities, regardless of whether or not that confidence has a basis in reality.

- Anyway, I have a growing list of patterns saved to make later. And also several articles of clothing I already own that I want to alter, mostly to add more pockets.

- I haven't been doing a lot of regular solo rpg playing in the last couple months, but I picked up my Starforged game on a whim last night and played it for about three hours. Starforged is still, seriously, the best game just on a mechanical level, and I'd forgotten how much I love the character and setting I'd made for this game - now playing it is all I want to do. I hadn't actually played since before I got my physical books/cards and it's amazing how much nicer it is to flip through a book to look up rules as opposed to a pdf. I can't play tonight as I have choir after work, but I'm definitely going to on Tuesday. And maybe every day this week - who knows? Really, I need to get back to having a regular weekly solo boardgame/rpg night.
darchildre: the outline of a 20-sided die over a faded rainbow on a black background (d&d time!)
I feel like I mostly spent yesterday playing Starforged (I did do other stuff, but it was boring), which was great. I have no real plans for today either, so there will likely be even more Starforged.

I talk about how much I love Ironsworn and Starforged a lot, I know, but I really want to gush in specific about two mechanical aspects of the games.

1) Both games are built on the Powered by the Apocalypse system, which gives you basically three possible outcomes when you roll: a strong hit, a weak hit, or a miss. My first rpg, like many of us, was D&D, where if you fail a roll, the thing you're trying to do doesn't happen. Like, you're looking for clues, you roll a 2 on Investigation, and you just don't find them. That makes sense as an outcome but gods, it's boring. Ironsworn and Starforged doesn't do that. If you roll a miss on the Gather Information move, you still learn something - it's just that what you learn is "a dire threat or unwelcome truth that undermines your quest". That's so much better, because it doesn't simply say "no" and lead to a dead end - it opens up something new. Even in the places where a miss does mean you don't succeed, the game is explicitly written to open up new possibilities, even if they're awful. The lack of dead ends because of failed rolls is great.

2) This one is Starforged specific - I love the way the game encourages and rewards making friends. In Ironsworn, the only way you earn XP is by completing quests. In Starforged, you still earn XP from quests, but you also earn XP from exploring, and from making friends. Further, in Ironsworn, a bond was a binary state - you meet an NPC, you decide you want to be friends, you make a single roll, and if you succeed you get a few mechanical bonuses interacting with than NPC. In Starforged, you meet an NPC, make an initial Connection roll, and then you start a progress track to becoming friends - you get XP if you fill the track and form a bond with them. Marking progress on that track requires interaction with than NPC in a variety of ways - sharing intense experiences, helping them out or them helping you, etc - so you have to continue to interact with them if you eventually want to get that XP. My playstyle already involves a lot of making friends with NPCs, but I love the way the game actively encourages and rewards that. I think Ironsworn is rad and I still play it rules-as-written, but every time I do I miss the way Starforged handles NPC relationships.
darchildre: the outline of a 20-sided die over a faded rainbow on a black background (d&d time!)
One actual problem with solo rpgs is...okay. In general, I don't pre-plan stuff for my games - I might have, like, a vague idea of stuff that might happen, or things I might encounter in a certain location, but that's it. And when I'm playing Ironsworn or Starforged, I plan even less and let the various oracle rolls guide the story. This means that I can encounter surprising and unexpected things, which is cool.

However, it also means that, when I encounter those surprising and unexpected things, they aren't designed to be part of the story. When I find, for example, an ancient alien ruin in the middle of doing something important and potentially time-sensitive, it wasn't put there by the GM as a cool fun sidequest - it's actually distraction that my character probably doesn't have time for. And the characters around mine aren't other players who also want to do the cool sidequest - they're NPCs who would prefer to finish the Actually Important Thing we're supposed to be doing.

I really want to explore the spooky alien ruin, though. Time to roll dice to see if I can convince my companions to give me an hour to look around.

Profile

darchildre: a candle in the dark.  text:  "a light in dark places". (Default)
Renfield

September 2024

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 12th, 2025 04:16 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios