Ironsworn, Delve, Starforged and Sundered Isles are games by Shawn Tomkin. Game material and content is reproduced here for review purposes and is owned by Tomkin Press. Sundered Isles benefited from crowdfunding. You will get into Ironsworn right now.
1. Every Individual Component Is The Best
In our analysis, we consider every individual artistic element of a game the best; we do not find bad or good useful. So, the Split/Party framework assumes it is the best art, best layout, best writing, best design. This is an acknowledgement that nobody makes “bad” art on purpose; any given element is the best art that could have been produced at that point, restricted by its material conditions and constraints of time and effort. This is also because saying something is good/bad art is the most useless criticism that can be given. In practical term, this section is for things we will not touch on the review but merit acknowledgement. )
Ludo
Well, it is Ironsworn. Ironsworn is one of those things in games that can only be called extravagant, that our method has very little to say about but keeps croping in due to the large shadow they cast. It joins Lancer: Battlegroup as another game we just have to admit they should not be given material conditions and be forever grateful for them.
Ironsworn has been the benchmark for its own genre of gaming, standing as itself among fantasy crawlers, solo games and good old “traditional” fantasy or sci fi. Nobody does it like Ironsworn; nobody does what Ironsworn does better than Ironsworn. Sleak in design, clean in layout, approachable and accessible, free for everyone, easy to support, easy to get, intricate and deep to master. A game so elegant in its internal dynamics and systemic understanding of itself that creates what it intends to do either one plays solo, co-operatively or guided. To deny yourself Ironsworn is to deny yourself a landmark achievement in the art-form, one that one is hard pressed to find excuses to prive themselves of.
Ironsworn has given much to the artform, and the people listened and wanted to support it. And they did, allowing Sundered Isles to exist as an absolute part of the Ironsworn: Starforged crowdfunding campaign. Repaying the almost a decade of generosity from Shawn Tomkin, they gave all they could to make Sundered Isles possible.
It is more Ironsworn, that should it say it all.
However, Ironsworn has done a lot and has been flawlessly elegant in its design, and that is double-edged. From the original sword fantasy, relation-focused origins of Ironsworn, to the addition of clever dungeon delving, to a galaxy-sojourn epic among the stars.
Sundered Isles is more Ironsworn, may be the most Ironsworn yet, may be the most polished, self-contained Ironsworn yet, and yet, it is also the one that better high-light tensions of continuing to design upon the carbon-fiber and iron heart of Ironsworn. It has resistance, friction, in how new additions come together. Friction, that makes spark, Friction, that makes this the most interesting Ironsworn may have been yet.
Continue to deny yourself at your own peril.
Brad
Ironsworn is the game that made me believe solo and shared GM games could work; for that, I owe it a debt that cannot be understated.
I love the ideas and am genuinely intrigued and delighted by a shot to critique it.
2. Meet The Game At The Level It Is At
Each game comes with certain expectations and tone. To properly breakdown, we have to meet the game at the level it is: not lament its choice of premise and wish it was something else, nor resent for not conforming with our politics, not letting “missed opportunities” stand in our way of applying the critical framework relentlessly. It also includes not working with the game as marketed or how it exists in our desires, but as it is.
Lucrécia
Ironsworn makes very few demands from you. It is all about the demands
The game is pretty approachable and accessible. You go online and get the digital version of the original game, for free. This version is in no way truncated, or a compromise; nor in layout, illustration, writing or design. It is all you need for Ironsworn. If you like it, there is more, and you can support the continued stewardship of Ironsworn.
It is, by far, of every single TTRPG, the one that I had best results teaching people completely new to the artform with.
However, Ironsworn is all about a type of narrative in TTRPGs. It is why it is able to seeminglessly transition between solo, guided or cooperative, and how everything works. It is, in fact, the current pinnacle of the power of interpretative collaborative narrative in the artform of TTRPGs.
What do I mean with this interprative narrative? Narrative in Ironsworn is not born from apriori assumptions, what you carry with you, or arbitrary calls, but interpreting and narrativizing such interpretations. From the very beginning, when you start creating your character and world, you are interpreting choices, oracle answers, trackers and vows and assets in an interwoven narrative. This is Ironsworn, and this is what playing Ironsworn will be like. This may not meet the expectations, either from a more authoritarian guide figure or from the solo side, that solo games tend to be more focused on what you bring with you already have and/or as a lyrical communication with the designer.
Ironsworn also shows the power of a well-designed game that harnesses the power of interpretative narrative, not as a support beam, but as the game itself. It is well worth to meet it there, as you will be constantly surprised: not only to what you can imagine, but by possibilities that challenge you to imagine other things.
Sundered Isles continues the welcomed change from Starforged, being more concerned with safety and comfort than other games, having custom safety tools. However, unfortunately, they do not meet the hypothetical potential of specialized safety tools that I have recently talked about. They have worked more or less as well as their general, universal equivalents in the X card and Script Change; with the same cave-ats and limitations. Still, they are one of the few games that understands the need and has made attempts to support the generation of such culture of comfort and safety.
Brad
Ironsworn has always demanded only that you come with an eagerness to learn and experience it. Sundered Isles is no different.
You open the game with whoever is playing making choices, and then continue doing so for however long you intend to play. Learn as you go, make interesting choices and live with the consequences and always have a great time doing so.
If you have a group where people are eager to run games and explore concepts, but are willing to share a stage, Ironsworn in all forms enables and rewards that, and you'd be surprised what wonders pour out of the table.
3. Identify What The Game Says It Is About
Games are about things. Usually. Mostly. That is often the same thing they market themselves as. This often means to establish the relationship of the game with systems, mechanical frameworks, genre, etc. This is how games establish exceptions about the nature of play and creates a common space for creation.
Ludo
Sundered Isles is pirate Ironsworn. You are an ironsworn, an avowed adventurer empowered by the vows they make to others and themselves. You are also a child of the sea, your fate entwined to the salty mistress, your adventures taking you across it. You are also a rebel, fighting on the behalf of the oppressed against tyranny.
Sundered Isles is also the more “supernatural” Ironsworn yet, giving you a fantastical cursed world to fight for.
Brad
Sundered Isles is about fun high-seas pirate adventures, bound by fate and oath to fight tyrants and earn wealth. The game centers as all Ironsworn games do, around the promises you make to each other and the greater world around you.
4. Uncover What The Game Is REALLY About
What the game says it is about is not always what the game is about. This is where we look at all the weird interactions, examining the system that game creates, how the way mechanics interact with the text and art, how it exists on a given context, how well parts flow together or get in the way. This creates a much richer environment that the original design could ever imagine once a game hits the table.
Lucrécia
All Ironsworn games are about bonds, and connections, and finding meaning. The meaning is the one that you narratively interpret, the meaning you give to them — and thus, as real as any meaning can be. You do what you do for your bonds, to make new bonds, to preserve and improve bonds, hammered into vows of iron. This is the inescapable metallic core of the game, what every Ironsworn is about.
What is Sundered Isles about then? Well, there are a lot of piratey things, for sure. The sea is there, right. The rebel aspect… maybe, if you bring it; it is not there inherently any more than in any other Ironsworn game. It is a flavor pack you may or not use or even bring, so outside of the remarks and comments of this critical method.
Where I found that Sundered Isles kept dragging me back again and again was something that always been an outstanding strength of Ironsworn, but Sundered Isles can do it better than any of its previous incarnations.
If a game like MEGALOS is about making a new science, and making you treat it as a lens of forming and applying knowledge, by contrast Ironsworn is about making the fantastical feel fantastical. In a world of stat-blocks, of mechanized spells, of catalogued lore and itemized tables, true magic in fantasy is quite rare. It is hard for it to feel mysterious, unknowable, bigger, when you are all too aware of its mechanical intricacies, the lore of fandom and other data-bases, or the predilections of your buddies, the IPs and data-bases they prefer and what they think about “magic systems” and other nonsense. Be it Content or be your GM, magic and fantasy is very knowledgeable.
Making masterful use of interpretative narrative, Ironsworn always makes you meet the truly fantastical. You never sure what works, and how, but at the same time you can learn and prepare yourself. The fantasy world you brave is not one from your imagination, limited but what you can materially know, bound by mechanical rules or personal arbitration that you can master. The oracles, the die and the interpretations you have made and may ever made will keep surprising you.
The fantastical never felt as fantastical as Sundered Isles. The new oracles are outstanding, as is the addition of the cursed die. A brilliant innovation, escalates how much interpretation from each consultation to degrees comparable to One Roll Engine, raising Ironsworn to new highs of potential. And in Sundered Isles? That new frontier of what can be done with Ironsworn is to make every step, every action, every narrative beat feel like standing at the edge of an infinite ocean, beneath the gaze of twin moons and the cursed tides they weave.
Oh the things you can find out you never find out.
So yeah, Sundered Isles? Is about getting to be cursed.
Brad
Sundered Isles is the first fantasy game I have played in a long time that is truly about Exploration.
You will truly discover a world of wonder, horror, curses and oaths broken and forged and reforged and rebroken. The cursed die? The Oracles? All of it working in concert allows the mythical fourth pillar of a game that seemed impossible to actually factually work. You swear oaths and go on adventures as you will in every single Ironsworn game, and you may occasionally see something that surprises you, but Sundered Isles really is where it snaps into its beautiful shape of Exploring a wonderful endless sea.
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