Take your role-playing game to the stars with Ironsworn: Starforged

Humanity is forced to leave the Milky Way in the far future. The last remnants of humanity are forced to abandon the Milky Way by their Exodus ships. The Forge, a wild and strange new place full of unknown energies and new opportunities, is quite different from the rest. What made humans flee to escape? They also found what they were looking for at the Forge. What did they find? A new civilization that spans stars, or an area of lawlessness with scattered settlements. Just by asking those questions, you’re already playing Ironsworn StarforgedThis is the Sci-Fi follow-up. Ironsworn’s (low) fantasy setting.

StarforgedBuilds Ironsworn’s mechanics, but you don’t need to know IronswornTo play. The core gameplay element of Powered by the Apocalypse-inspired and PbtA games is the same as other Powered by the Apocalypse. StarforgedThis is an invitation for people to come together to create. It’s the collaborative-est of collaborative storytelling. Hell, Starforged doesn’t even need a GM — it’s optimized for solo or small group play. If you do play with a GM, they’re there to guide Your story; you’re not there to experience theirs.

Image: Joshua Meehan

As a storyteller and player, your job is to connect concepts and adapt to new problems. Seek outThe story that your character is part of. It is important to envision. Starforged — it shows up in bold throughout the book as a gameplay prompt. It’s a way to ask you, the player, to imagine an answer instead of relying on someone else to provide it. It allows you to see how the new information will change your goal. Imagine what it would look like to gain the upper hand during a battle. Imagine the moment your ship drops unexpectedly from warp.

It’s when your imagination fails — when you come up against a question that you don’t have an answer for — that Starforged shines. The rulebook contains 100 pages dedicated to random generation tables. You can find answers to almost every question with these Oracle Tables. Rolling on an Oracle Table can answer any question, from yes-and no questions to specific aspects about the setting to information about planet atmosphere.

These random tables and your imagination come together as soon as you begin a session zero. Starforged. A few dozen rolls of dice and lots of flipping between the tables creates a richly detailed setting with current events, history, star charts of the starting sector and named planets and settlements. I also include notes on local industry. With more rolling, I have a personality, backstory and skills as well as assets and a goal.

Image: Joshua Meehan

The random rolls and prolific tables give me suggestions and prompts, and from there I get to draw the connections between them — to Seek outThey fit in the overall story. I see that the ice planet I just rolled up has “new salvage” on it and that the nearby orbital settlement specializes in “festivals” and “migration.” After some free association and a hop across my Jump to Conclusions Mat, I decide that the settlement is really into commemorating the Exodus, and that the new salvage on the planet below is probably a derelict Exodus ship. This immediately made me curious to learn more.

It is enough to recommend the Oracle Tables by themselves. StarforgedAny GM. They’re a master class in random generation and, more importantly, Idea generation.

What about? StarforgedWhat if it were a video game?

As with other PbtA Games, StarforgedThose moves are what make the game work. These are actions that can be triggered either through the narrative, or by the player. These are called inflection points. They can be used to perform anything, from throwing a punch to completing a complete planetary survey.

Image: Joshua Meehan

The dice roll is what determines moves. A pair of 10-sided dice sets the difficulty level for the challenge. One six-sided dash determines your performance against it. The challenge dice give you the opportunity to increase your ability modifiers, as well as help from allies and assets. This new number is then compared with the original two. If you beat both, it’s a strong hit. If you only beat one, it’s a weak hit. If you fail to beat either of them, it’s a miss.

Failure and success are two different things. StarforgedInstead of simply being pass-fail binary, they are narrative-driven. When you attempt to collect information, weak hits mean you have your answer but an additional problem is introduced. If you miss on a move to make a new friend, they reveal a motivation that’s at odds with yours instead of just not becoming an ally.

The best way to add the twist to a story is with movements. Problem with Starforged is that there are, frankly, too many moves — over 50, in fact, and that muddies the gameplay experience. When my character finds a still-functioning computer from the days of the Exodus, does that mean I’m “Exploring a Waypoint” on my journey or do I “Gather Information” from it? When I ask a local to help me out, am I “Making a Connection” or am I “Compelling” them to help me? There’s no right or wrong answer here. Any option is possible, and it’s up to the story (or readers) to decide what move should be next. The story comes to a grinding halt when you have to go through all the moves to choose the best.

Image: Joshua Meehan

Moreover, you can only make progress toward your goals if certain steps are taken. Every action you make gets a tracker. There’s one for your background vow (your overarching life’s purpose), and one for each additional vow (quest) you take on. Each contact or faction that you have with someone you meet, and each time you use them to make a connection, you get a brand new one. Every expedition, quest and journey gets its own tracker. These trackers show how far you have come in completing a task, such as winning an investigation or winning fights.

Image: Joshua Meehan

And that’s the problem I keep running into while I play Starforged. While it isn’t particularly difficult when it comes down to math and creating complex systems, it can require some bookkeeping. By the time I roll my first dice to set off into space, I’ve got four pages of character sheets and trackers. My stats and health meter are on one page, a map of the current sector and the settlements there are on the next page, my connections to friends and enemies are on a third, and I’m tracking the progress of my current expedition on a fourth. All the paperwork and bookkeeping feel like they’re working against Starforged’s great system for creating an interesting setting and introducing compelling storylines — the part I like the most.

What do you think about Ironsworn Starforged is really about how good you think it is at getting out of the way so you can focus on imagining — envisioning — your story. When you’re unfamiliar with the system, you’re going to be in the weeds a lot, checking lists of moves and trying to decide if you need to start yet another progress tracker. When everything is working, it’s easy to get back on track. Ironsworn StarforgedYour efforts will pay off with a world of riches (well, at least a rich global cluster), and the opportunity to share some amazing stories.

Ironsworn Starforged DriveThruRPG provided a digital copy for review. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Here are some links to help you find. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.