Greetings to all who are interested in this project. Just to give you a quick heads up, English isn’t my mother tongue, and this is the first time I am doing something like this, so please forgive me in case the presentation of this project isn’t perfect.
Now that you are warned, let me give you an overview of what this will be about. In this kind of blog style substack I will write about my experiences with solo pen and paper roleplay games, and for the start I decided to go with an Ironsworn Starforged campaign.
My posts will mostly be in the style of an actual play, but as I will be both player and gamemaster, I will add my gm thoughts as well.
Session 0.1: Or how to begin
The first, or better zeroth session, we will start by preparing the setting. As this is an important part of the game, there is a section in the book just for that. It contains exercises that will lead me through this in a step by step kind of way.
One important part about this, is the principle of “Prep is Play”, that is mentioned right at the beginning of this chapter. Following this principle, we can clearly see, that going through these exercises and preparing the game for launch already is playing the game.
As I am playing solo, I will skip the first part of the section that is for setting boundaries for the campaign. With only me playing, I am sure I will honor my own boundaries just fine. So let’s start with the first exercise.
Choose your truths
This exercise is all about the basic definitions of the setting. We will have a list of things that call for us choosing one of the prepared truth, or creating some truth about the setting our own. But before we come to choosing our own truth, here are some of the default assumptions regarding the setting. I will summarize them even shorter that how they are in the rulebook, but if you want to have a look at them, you’ll find them on page 81.
We’ll be playing in a galaxy far away, that is called the forge. Humanity had to flee to this chaotic, dangerous and mysterious place after something terrible happened to their home worlds.
Humanity is the only intelligent life in the forge, but there may be some exceptions depending on the truths we choose later on.
There had been other intelligent lifeforms, but they are long gone. The only mysterious and perilous vaults remain of them.
Humanity is diverse, there are all kind of people and culture among those that came to the forge.
Settlements are scattered through out the forge and travel between them can be dangerous. Besides these settlements, huge parts of the forge are unexplored.
The setting is retro-futuristic in nature. Technology didn’t evolve much from where we are at the moment, and in some places, it even reverted to something more retro. Just think computers loading their programs from magnetic cassettes or personal communicator displays looking like old TVs.
This galaxy is unjust, as those that manages to get money and power hoard it for themselves and use it to impose their will on others.
But even with all these problems and dangers, this is a setting of hope. And with every sworn vow the characters fulfill, they enact this hope.
Now that we know about the default assumptions, the next part will be choosing our own truth about the setting, which will be built on top these assumptions. These truths will be used to decide how our forge will be regarding 15 important topics. For each of them, the rulebook gives three prepared truth, which are marked, so we can roll on them if we don’t want to decide for ourself or just want to get surprised by what our setting is like.
Besides telling you, which truth I chose for each topic I will add some of my thoughts on why I chose it.
Cataclysm
Something terrible happened to the home worlds of humanity, and it was so bad they had to flee to a galaxy far away. But what was it?
I decided, that humanity was raided by interdimensional entities that resemble mechanical crustaceans with the ability to connect and merge to form big structures like their battle fleet.
Humanity had no way to fight back, while these creatures raided their worlds, stripping them of resources and growing their forces.
The Exodus
Faced by these dangers, how was humanity able to flee. This is what the second category is all about.
For my version of the Setting, I decided they were able to find mysterious alien gates that opened a one way wormhole, sending the humans exodus fleet all the way to the forge before closing down. Now they are stranded in this new Galaxy with no way to get back.
Communities
After landing in the forge, humanity started settling down, colonizing worlds and finding themselves a new home. For the type of communities, an especially the number of them, I chose the prepared truth, that has the least of them.
A huge chunk of humanity either lost their lives before they were able to flee, or on their way to the forge, as the wormhole was not without dangers. With so little of humanity left, they scattered through out the forge, leaving many small settlements fighting for their survival.
Iron
As an offshoot of the Ironsworn System, Iron and the vows sworn on it are quite important in Starforged as well. So as this is part of the core mechanic, of course there is a truth regarding the precious material.
In my version of the forge, there is a living metal created by a long dead civilization, which is called Blackiron. Ironsworn bind themselves and their vows to totems created from this metal in specialized plasma forges.
Laws
Even with the settlements scattered, they decided to sign a contract to uphold mutual system of laws for the whole galaxy. While these laws might be upheld more strict or lax depending on they specific settlement, they still have the same laws all around.
And that’s not all. An organisation called the keepers was founded to keep the laws and help the local police force. Even with me not knowing it when I decided for this truth, they will play a major role in the coming story.
Religion
As this topic is not as important to me, I simply choose the truth that will leave the door open, just in case I want to set more of a focus later. This truth simply says, that religion in the forge is just as diverse as the humans living there. Everyone can believe in what he wants to.
Magic
Do I want to have magic in my scifi game? And if I want it, what type of magic? These questions are answered with this truth. As a big fan of shadowrun (even though I don’t get to play it nearly as often as I’d like) I really like the combination of magic and technology. So it’s no surprise I decided to keep some magic in my version of the forge.
More specifically, I decided that mighty persons called Paragons have the ability to use superhuman abilities. Meeting a Paragon is a rare occurrence, as there aren’t that many of them. Their powers don’t come from within them, but are the result of them binding to magitech augmentations found in the remains of those who came before. Here’s a little spoiler: My character is on of those Paragons.
Communication and Information
Even though I like the Idea, that just like in the old wild west, messages have to be sent by messenger, this time I decided against it. The scattered remainder of humanity was able to create a network called the Weave, which allows them to communicate nearly instantaneous. It is made up of data hubs which exist both in the forge and the mystical parallel dimension called the Veil, and use it’s different physical laws.
But there still are systems so far removed from those hubs, that communication is difficult with them. While the Weave is expanded, courier drones are used to transfer messages to the next hum.
Medicine
Before humanity had to flee to the forge, medicine had advanced and there was close to nothing that was impossible to heal, but most of it got lost. Now those parts of the advanced knowledge and technology is hoarded by the rich and mighty.
But not everything is lost for those, that don’t have the money, as a group of healers called Riggers rose to help the masses. Using simple and cheap artificial body parts, they help the poor. But as always, quality has it’s price, and only those with money ca get their hands on the good stuff.
Artificial Intelligence
Do I want to have droids running around, that are as intelligent as humans, like they are in star wars? How about ai controlled battle fleets? My answer to these questions is a simple no.
After fleeing from mechanic crab monsters, it seems to be reasonable, that humanity decided to be skeptical towards everything concerning AI. This is why most of the technology that had been researched before they arrived in the forge, was destroyed, and what little survived is held tight by those with might. Especially the Keepers.
War
In my version of the forge, there are no wars. Resources are way to scarce and valuable to uphold organized troops. Many spaceships, Stations and Settlements are cobbled together from what ever they could find, and it’s rare for a settlement to be able to pay for more than a badly equipped militia for their own protection. Only the Keepers are different, but as they are the protectors of humanity, you wouldn’t expect anything different.
Lifeforms
Even though the forge is dangerous, life finds a way. Just as this galaxy is full of possibilities, there is diverse life on the livable planets. And even some of the animals brought by the humans managed to adapt to their new habitat.
Precursors
The civilization which once called the forge their home, is long gone. But on scarred planets and in the mysterious and dangerous vaults, there still are relics of their time.
In these places, bio-mechanical lifeforms called the Remnants are still fighting in an endless war.
Horrors
In the forge the veil between the realm of the living and the dead is as thin as paper, so it’s no wonder, when the dead don’t stay dead. Within the Keepers there is a group who call themselves the Souldbinders, and they decided to dedicate their lives to fighting against these horrors.
And that’s that. Now you know about the truth I chose for my version of the forge.
The next exercise is all about creating my character, so in the next post I will introduce the heroine of this campaign.