Ironsworn: Starforged

The Sci-Fi Evolution of the Ironsworn RPG is Here!

In Ironsworn: Starforged, you are a spaceborne hero sworn to undertake perilous quests. You will explore uncharted space, unravel the secrets of a mysterious galaxy, and build bonds with those you meet on your travels. Most importantly, you will swear iron vows and see them fulfilled—no matter the cost.

Starforged is a standalone follow-up to the Ironsworn tabletop roleplaying game. Experience with Ironsworn is not required. Starforged builds on Ironsworn's award-winning innovations (including its famed solo play!) to chart a path into an exciting new frontier. 

Now expansion: Sundered Isles, seafaring adventures for Ironsworn: Starforged

Three Ways to Play

• Guided: One or more players take the role of their characters, while a guide moderates the session.
• Co-Op: You and one or more friends play to overcome challenges and complete quests.  No guide required.
• Solo: You portray a lone character driven to fulfill vows in a dangerous galaxy. Good luck!
  
  

What's Included

• Story-driven mechanics to put your character at the center of their quest-driven adventures.
• Inspiring campaign launch exercises to build your setting, create your character, and set off into a universe of perils and opportunities.
• Creative prompts to eliminate game prep and push your adventures forward—with or without a guide.
• System-agnostic generators for on-the-fly discoveries of spaceborne locations, planets, settlements, people, creatures, starships, foreboding derelicts, ancient alien vaults, and more!
• Extensive advice, examples, and options for exploring the story of your characters and their fateful vows.

About the Starforged Digital Edition

The Starforged Digital Edition includes everything you need to play.

• A 404-page, lavishly illustrated rulebook. The rulebook PDF is fully bookmarked, hyperlinked, indexed, searchable, and optimized for fast tablet display. Portrait and landscape (two-page spread) formats are included.  
• 87 print-andplaycharacter asset cards, including your starship, support vehicles, modules, paths, companions, and deeds.
• The Starforged Playkit, which contains the character sheet, move reference sheets, and an array of useful worksheets.
• BONUS: A PDF version of the 127-page Starforged Reference Guide. This handy companion contains core content from the Starforged rulebook, along with additional condensed summaries. It includes the moves, the complete set of oracle tables, a rules breakdown, a glossary, and more. It's everything you need to keep your story moving.

The System

In Starforged, moves help you decide what happens when you encounter something dangerous or uncertain. There is a move for most situations and challenges you will face. For solo and co-op play, these moves help resolve your actions and trigger new opportunities and complications. Starforged moves are inspired by the innovative, fiction-first mechanics of the Apocalypse World system created by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker.

When you make a move triggered by a risky or uncertain action, roll three dice at once to see what happens: an action die (D6) and two challenge dice (D10). Add your relevant stat and any bonuses to your action die. This is your action score. Then, compare your action score to each of the challenge dice. If you beat both those dice, that's a strong hit. If you only beat one of the challenge dice, you've scored a weak hit. If your action score doesn't beat either challenge die, that's a miss. The move will tell you how to interpret these results. 

Character creation is fast and flexible, with a guided exercise to help define your background, resources, expertise, and goals. During play, you use the character sheet to manage your stats and resources. As you complete quests, make discoveries, and form bonds, you gain experience. You spend this experience to gain assets—vehicles, modules, paths, and companions—which deepen your abilities and options. Assets are formatted as printable, poker-sized cards for easy reference.

Tone and Inspiration

Starforged is human-centric science fiction on a perilous frontier. This is a scavenged future, with equipment often cobbled together from salvage. People cling to survival on inhospitable worlds and in remote space stations. Much has been forgotten or lost. It's a dangerous life for anyone living on this frontier, and doubly so for the Ironsworn—those adventurers bound to sworn quests.

Inspiration comes from the quest-driven stories of The Mandalorian, the lived-in aesthetic and fantasy-infused trappings of the original Star Wars trilogy, the workaday exploits of Firefly, the isolated horror of Alien, the mysticism and faction politics of Dune, the retro-tech and desperation of Battlestar Galactica's modern reboot, the cosmic mysteries and class struggles of The Expanse, and the gonzo adventures and fantastic locations of Guardians of the Galaxy.

You can bend the tone to your liking. You'll make a unique version of the setting as you define aspects such as its history, technology, communities, lifeforms, supernatural abilities, and more.

What's New

Are you a returning Ironsworn player? Welcome back! I really appreciate your ongoing support. You'll find some changes and enhancements to suit the spacefaring setting, but the core of the game will be familiar. If you're new to the Ironsworn system, Starforged gives you everything you need to undertake quests in a perilous galaxy.

Here's some highlights of what's changed from core Ironsworn. 

• Board your starship: Travel through the galaxy in your interstellar ship, and customize it with support vehicles and modules.
• Build a legacy: An expanded experience system offers legacy rewards for quests, discoveries, and bonds.
• Explore the galaxy: Use the expedition moves to travel through perilous space, journey over unexplored terrain, and survey mysterious sites.
• Create lasting relationships: Use the connection moves to establish new relationships and work to cultivate those connections over time.
• Fight for what matters: Flexible combat moves put the focus on action-oriented objectives.
• Keep flying: When you take a hit, use the damage and repair moves for your command ship, support vehicles, and mechanical companions.
• Ask the oracle: An incredible array of oracle tables to help inspire complications, opportunities, locations, people, settlements, creatures, starships, and more!
• Be who you want: More than 85 character assets for the sci-fi setting. If you loved Ironsworn's fast and flexible character creation, you'll find even more to love here.
• Make the universe your own: Guided exercises—including campaign truths, character creation, and starting situations—get your campaign off the launch pad.
• Stay safe: New session moves help ensure that everyone at the table can comfortably enjoy a fun and fulfilling experience.

Ironsworn and Starforged Buzz

“Ironsworn advanced the art of solo adventure game design by leaps and bounds, bringing innovative techniques and systems to the form and helping to introduce solo rpgs to a new generation of players. It's a masterpiece.”
- John Harper, Game Designer

“Starforged takes everything I love about Ironsworn—the balance of rules vs narrative freedom, the excellent solo mechanics, the Oracle system that sparks your imagination and lets you create your own unique version of the Ironlands—streamlines it, improves on it, and places it in a science fiction setting full of mystery and excitement.It's as if the game was made just for me!”
- Jamie McKelvie, Artist / Writer

“Starforged is Beowulf meets Firefly, on the raggedy edges of space with only your crew, your ship, and your glowcat. Your story unfurls in marvelously unexpected ways through the Oracles as you discover wonders and monsters.”

- Kate Ravenna, Writer

“The strongest point of Ironsworn for me is that it is massive toolbox. All of its parts hang together well as a singular product - and each one of them can also be taken outside of the ecosystem of the game, and repurposed for other things with minimal to zero adjustment.”
- Pamela Punzalan, Game Developer / Writer / Editor / Consultant

“Ironsworn is a near-perfect design for GMs who want to generate and experience — as a player! — surprising and satisfying twists and turns in a tabletop RPG. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to feature it in the second season of "Me, Myself and Die!”
- Trevor Duvall, Voice Actor / Host of Me, Myself & Die!

“Ironsworn is my overall favourite RPG, solo or otherwise. Starforged builds on the ideas of Ironsworn in meaningful ways, creating not only a remarkably more complete system but a more engaging and fun player experience. Starforged has elevated play in ways that will delight and surprise you; it is as good as it gets for solo play.”
- Norm, Co-Host of the Always Player One Podcast

“It’s miraculous how the system, with its simple mechanics and random tables, can create drama, tension and worldbuilding seemingly from thin air ... Ironsworn didn’t just make me a better player or Game Master – it made me a better storyteller.”
- Timothy, Pro DM / Filmmaker

“There are few greater powers in RPGs than a creative imagination fueled by randomness. Ironsworn’s oracles include just the right resolution to create fantastic locations, engaging situations and deep characters we would never think up on our own. Ironsworn is one of the most creative RPGs I’ve played in years.”
- Michael E. Shea (Sly Flourish), Writer

“Ironsworn is one of the smartest, best designed, TTRPGs I’ve ever played, and more than that I think it’s an incredible tool for writers and creatives. I am always amazed at how the mechanics can lead the narrative in unexpected and exciting ways. I’m so excited for Starforged and can’t wait to see what Shawn does next!”
- Mark Hulmes, Streamer / Writer

ALSO AVAILABLE FOR THE IRONSWORN RPG SYSTEM