Ironsworn: Wasteland Concept Phase
Not Your Daddies’ Ironsworn Hack
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| "Stalker" by DigitalEpicness is marked under CC PDM 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ |
Have you ever wanted to explore a zombie apocalypse scenario
but with influences of STALKER and DayZ in the free and awesome Ironsworn RPG?
Well to make this experiment a reality I’ve been cooking away at a setting hack
to do just that. Like a lot of you my in-person roleplaying has had to be cut
down quite a bit since quarantine began which has steered me back into the
direction of solo roleplaying. In addition, back into the realms of post-apocalyptic
gaming chiefly the buggy love-it-or-hate-it walking simulator DayZ by Bohemia
Interactive. The tension and paranoia felt by interacting with strangers while
setting your own survival goals reminded me so much of Ironsworn I felt the
need to see whether these two ideas can be fused together thus Ironsworn
Wasteland was born.
But why?
Ironsworn is by far one of my favorite TTRPG's, solo and
otherwise, to have come out within the last few years. Its mechanics enable
rich narrative gameplay while still offering both challenge and choice. Though
I have since played many other solo systems or used solo engines like Mythic to
play games I find myself missing Ironsworn as a complete package. This completeness
is often what turns a fun idea for a solo romp into a game night for me when
using other systems would lead to so much hacking or modification I get burned
out before even starting play.
So, why mess up a good thing? It's simple really, variety.
My one fault with the Ironsworn system is its inherent ties to a lower fantasy
Norse-esque setting which while simple enough to modify for other fantasy is
quite an order of magnitude rougher if I want to say transport the Ironlands to
someplace High Magic, or Steampunk, or in this case Modern Post-Apocalypse.
However, difficult doesn't have to be impossible and in fact most of our work
to change it may lie not in large mechanical shifts but simply reframing the
fiction around this new goal.
Reframing the Fiction: A Checklist
To start we first need to address the Ironlands. Though they
are an evocative backdrop for picaresque swords and sorcery shenanigans as much
as harsh medieval low fantasy survival they will need a bit of a facelift if we
are to bring them into the new version of the fiction. I have ideas about
keeping it as an island in the middle of nowhere inspired by the DayZ map of
Namalsk.
Secondly, and perhaps more important than the Ironlands
itself, are our truths. Or rather Your Truths. Your Truths are one of the most
important parts of the setting in Ironsworn and a big part if Ironsworns
usability for me. I easily get lost when creating free form settings to test
out game ideas but Ironsworns system of offering specific important questions
with three premade answers and an accompanying quest seed helps set my brain on
course for exciting emergent gameplay. These truths are not lore in the
traditional sense but more game focused setting we can use. Unfortunately, with
these new assumptions on the world we cannot keep these old truths and must
write our own. This step I think is the most pivotal to making the hack feel
like a new world.
Third and fourth are perhaps of equal importance to each
other but still a key part in making this work. They are of course the Moves
and Assets of the game as well as any new ones we should have to make to
realize our new fiction. Though I don't want to get bogged down by the Milsim
aspects of the genre having a move perhaps to interface with old technology
beyond securing an advantage sounds interesting to me. As well as Assets which
evoke a more modern feel or enable use of modern weapons over swords and bows.
As you can see this will be quite a project and though I can't guarantee this will be done soon expect more posts about the various pieces of the project as time goes on. For now, here is a sample run through of what Your Truths could look like as well as a sample Asset and Region of the Island.
Thanks for reading.
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| "Massacre Bay, Attu" by USFWSAlaska is marked under CC PDM 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ |
World: The Island
An island decimated and left in ruins by a terrible cataclysm known only as the Event. In the time Before it was a hub of civilization where people lived and worked as they would all over the world. In the After it is a dead place haunted by the ghosts of humanity's lost wonders and legions of the reanimated dead. Here, desperate survivors cling to what remains of the past while they scrape together a life from the corpse of Before. Some believe the island hides a great secret. Others look for a way out. Most just want to live to see another day. The Island holds the key to all of this and more to those who are able to brave it's trials.
Before
1. The world Before was much as it is now. The rich get richer and poor get poorer but some people scrape by and others even thrive. There was a pleasant naivety in the momentum of modern life. It was too big, too complicated, and too farfetched an idea to believe that they were living on borrowed time. We refused to see it.
2. The world Before was on the brink of death. Ravaged by climate change and a never-ending war for resources among the great powers. Healthy food and clean water were luxuries only obtainable by the very rich. Life for everyone else was short, brutal, and blighted by malaise. Every day a city was consumed by experimental weapons or violent revolution. Humanity was already doomed. The Event just sped up the inevitable.
3. The world Before was on the cusp of greatness. Advanced technology and artificial intelligence had been used to make life a wondrous and bountiful thing for more people than ever before. Missions to the far corners of the Solar System were becoming not just possible but routine and a colony on a nearby world spoke to hope for the human race while promising an even brighter future just over the horizon. What fools we were.
The Event
1. Solar Flare. A solar flare followed by a coronal mass ejection (CME) caused chaos on a global level. Fires ravaged cities while communications were destroyed utterly. The world was plunged into the dark for the first time since the invention of electricity. To make matters even worse the magnetic poles of the earth flipped causing a series of natural disasters to ravage what was left of surviving nation states. Wildfires raged unchecked in the wilderness while vanishing supply lines meant people simply could not coordinate to get what they needed to the right people. Anarchy reigned when people realized help was not coming. All that remained was survival.
2. Global Pandemic.
3. Nuclear war.
Arrival
1. Refugees. You arrived here with a large group of other refugees on boats fleeing the mainland after the Event had ravaged the world believing that this place had been spared. You were questioned and quarantined by the islands soldiers in a large refugee camp on the coast while they mulled over what to do with you. Catastrophe struck and the order of the Island collapsed before the truth could be found. Though most inhabitants of the Island are refugees or descendants of them pockets of survivors from the Island regard you with suspicion or even outright hostility.
2. Prisoners. You arrived on the Island as a prisoner among hundreds of others used manual labor and scientific experiments. After the Event your people made a break for it and scattered across the island looking for a way out but most never made it. Now, your trapped with the other desperate survivors as well as what remains of your former captors.
3. Soldiers.
The Experiment
1. Alien Artifacts.
2. Nanomachines.
3. Supernatural Influence.
Who's Left
1. Walled enclaves functioning as city-states of disparate survivors.
2. Isolated refuges containing only dozens of survivors. The last gasp of humanity.
3. Factions rule networks of enclaves and war across the Island plundering what remains while enacting their own agendas.
Iron
1. Remnants of the people who saved you.
2. Anomalous material changed by the Event.
3. Relics of hope and prosperity.
The World Beyond
1. There is no one else.
2. Some nations have been carved out from the remnants of the dying old superpowers.
3. The odds of finding a group of people back on the mainland are almost impossible.
Regions:
1. The Icebound Blockade: Amidst the ice floes which ring their way around the island are the remnants of ships, civilian and military, which were unlucky enough to be caught out during the Event. Their crews are long dead leaving husks and skeletons of iron and wood drafting lazily into the ice. The ships sing a siren song to the desperate or inexperienced who believe that their salvation can be found on these rusted hulks should they ever find a ship that has gone unlooted or even still functional. Most are found later frozen to death on the coast or bobbing in the water left to the sea birds and sharks.
:Features:
- Treacherous currents of chilling seawater
- Beaches of black sand and myriad of beached shipwrecks
- Carrion sea birds twisted by the Event
- Impenetrable fog
- Icy winds
- Jagged rocks hidden just out of sight
- Desperate survivors searching the wrecks
- The dead frozen in lightless hulls
- Meandering ice floes that vanish in the mist
- Wandering predators looking for an easy meal
Quest Starter: A survivor on the coast begs you for helping in locating their partner and child lost out in the mists near an old shipwreck. Why were you told never to go there and what enticing reward does the survivor offer that makes risking everything worth it?
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| "Sinking Ship, Kiska, Alaska, 1946, KANO MARU" by born1945 is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ |
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