Insert Coin
A Little Background
TL;DR: I made a stripped down version of the solo RPG Ironsworn that includes the position and effect of Blades in the Dark along with a cleaner solution for progress tracks. Find it here.
Often, for weeks at a time, my imagination will just get captured by an idea for a game. I won't be able to put it down, but I also won't have the verbs to really engage with it. I get stuck in planning. Researching. Going on walks and trying to make the thing play out in my head. Eventually I burn out. With no way to act on an idea it never gets a chance to be anything more than just a daydream.
But, in the last year or so I've discovered a tool that has let me find a way to do more than daydream. Solo RPG's They let me use the tools I'm most familiar with to act on something that has always been just a hollow ache in my gut. And they let me do it whenever and wherever I want. With no planning and no pressure. I'm free to let the mysterious part of my brain that burbles with creative ideas go wild. And I can capture that process and refine it.
And that's my goal here. To capture my ideas and processes and fashion them into something repeatable and useful to others.
To that end, here are the tools I'm currently using. The big name in solo RPG's is Ironsworn. If you haven't heard of it you should check it out. The PDF is free and it is an extremely well written game.
Ironsworn Turbo: Bladesworn
But for all of it's strengths, there are parts of Ironsworn that I always stumble over when I try and use them. So I cut out the parts I like and mixed them with the stuff I like from my other favorite game, Blades in the Dark. I call it Bladesworn and it's become my tool for helping me take a feeling and a daydream and fashion it into something I can act on.
Pertinent Changes:
Fewer Moves: Instead of the wide variety of moves in core Ironsworn I’m using only two general moves:
Take Action: Covers all the moment to moment rolls that are driven by your attributes.
Finish it: Covers all “Progress Moves.
Grit instead of Momentum: Grit is gained by choosing to fail on a Weak Hit (and Motivations). This introduces some tactical meta-gaming
Side note, this assumes the use of Samuel Rondón's amazing Motivation Cards
Changes to Harm and Gear: When you would take harm, mark a condition next to one of your stats for each harm. If you cannot mark a condition, you are dead. You may declare gear as needed, but it must be put in a gear slot. If gear is lost or broken cross out the slot. You can fill it with things you find, but you can’t declare it to be whatever you want.
Simpler Progress Tracks: This system makes clocks easier to use and provides a linear difficulty curve. It also introduces a system where by the fictional situation determines how fast you make progress.
Currently these rules are pretty generic and intended to be largely compatible with core Ironsworn. If you have a trait or an asset that names moves from that game, you can easily just interpret them as fictional triggers. If you would take momentum, you can gain Grit instead.
Going Forward
Part of the reason this exists is because I use solo RPGs as a way to explore worlds I want to create. For this one, I'm playing in a plague ridden WWI setting where the war has sorta sputtered out as infection makes people into monsters. Castles and cult riddled mountain towns. Gas choked no-mans lands with things in the fog. Abandoned fortresses with unholy science experiments in the basements. Wolfenstein, Resident Evil 4, and Bloodborne in the trenches of WWI. As this develops it will probably become less generic.
If you find this useful in your own endeavors, or if you have questions about how I use these tools, let me know in the comments!
