# Day 10: IronFrame - Durer Hyphos, Recon Hardsuit Pilot tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/ironframe > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice You know how some days you're just not catching fire when you need to kick off doing what you need for the day? That's where I'm at today. One of the challenges of these 31-day challenges, in a very literal sense, is the need to get up, put pen to paper, and do it every single day. Some days you're more motivated than others, and some days what you're doing doesn't really help you. I love mecha settings. I love giant robots. I love war.[^1] I love the whole architecture of it, whether it be hardcore straight-up wargame or airy-fairy theater of the mind, hyper-abstraction. Give me some giant robots slugging it out, and I'm generally a happy man. Generally. ![[IronFrame (cover).jpg|400]] Today on the character block we have *IronFrame*, which you could absolutely be forgiven for thinking would probably be an *Ironsworn* derivative. Perversely, it is not. It is instead more of a *Stoneburner* derivative, at least as far as the hit and success mechanics. This pretty trivially breaks down into two modes of play: pilots and mechs, each of which gets their own mechanical write-up. Normally, this would be a sort of crunchy, complicated process, but not here. In fact, it's so lightweight, I can't even really describe it as high speed, low drag. It feels like it should be crunchier, but isn't. In terms of setting, this lightweight trope-forward design kind of leaves me cold. Congratulations. The galaxy is at war, and nobody even remembers why it started, but four giant corporations and one evil empire are fighting over the territory. I feel like that should immediately *tell* you what started the conflict, but maybe I'm overthinking it. I enjoy cynicism in setting design more than the next guy, but when you make essentially the only powers in your universe mustache-twirling assholes on all sides, with the intended protagonists being freelance mercenaries who sell out to the highest bidder, even I sometimes have a little trouble getting into that, and you would think I would be all over it. The problem for me is you've got to give me a little more meat. Okay. There is *one* other faction at large in the galaxy, the Free Holdings, which are basically the pockets of unclaimed territory between the others, which are trying to form defensive militias. But since they don't actually define a unified entity, and even individual planets aren't outlined even by hint in the text, it seems just too little. > [!info]- An Aside > Amusingly, or not, this very much puts me in the mind of the sketch of the outline for the tabletop wargame *[[Steel Rift]]*, which I have written a fair amount about elsewhere on *Grim Tokens*. Corporations and nation-states at war in a galaxy? Absolutely. Freelancers selling their bodies and mechs out for the highest bidder? Please, yes. But despite the fact that *Steel Rift* goes about its setting construction in a deliberately lightweight way, it knows that we need to be on top of what's going on under the hood. And so it tells you up front that humanity used to have a solar system-spanning civilization, but then the entire energy network collapsed, and now people are scrambling around for scraps of power and to hold on to what bit of civilization they have. > > Plus, it makes creating said corporations, nation-states, and other organizations part of creating your particular group of soldiers who can be working for whoever they like. It's lightweight, it's straightforward, but it gives you an actual connection to something that's going on and why it's important. None of that is in this setting, and it bugs me. The book actually kicks off with talking about and describing in depth, such as it is, the combat mechanics. It's fairly obvious what the intent of play is here. Let's go ahead and flip to the character generation section and see what we can do. ## Acts of Creation Flying in the face of convention, the mech construction system comes before the character creation system. That's right, you build the mech before you build the pilot. Again, you can see exactly where the focus is in this game. ### Hardware A mech is composed of five major components, and each of those components is assigned a die between D4, D6, D8, D10, and D12. When you roll a die in a test, you basically just roll that die and compare it to the result table. If you get a 5+, you get the best possible result. If you roll a 3 to 4, you get a good result with a trade-off. If you roll a 2, you've got a bad result with a trade-off. And if you roll a 1, you get the worst result. Now immediately, it's obvious that if you have a D4 in your component or skill, there's no way that you can ever get the best result when you roll against it. I'm all about mechanical systems in which complications can come to pass as part of play, but I really dislike giving players something at character generation which will always come with a complication. Now there are things later in the mechanics which allow you to upgrade die step or downgrade with negative effects, but here we are. | Component | | --------- | | Tech | | Chassis | | Speed | | Arms | | Size | | Core | All pilots start with a core 30, and every successful mission increases that value by 2. Now, if you're looking at the book like I am on page 4, which has the sample mechs immediately following the mech components, you will see that there is a mech health stat on both of the sample mechs. Where is that derived from? Fuck if I know. It's not talked about in the text before that. All right, so we need to work backwards to figure out what it is that we are allowed to do within the context of mecha creation here. We know that the maximum value of the combined component dice can't be higher than 30. That appears to be our only limitation, given that there are five components. That means that we could put a d6 in every component and be good to go. Everything else is going to be juggling up and down from that. Fine. We can do that. Would that have been a way better way to express any or all of this? Yes, it would. | Component | Die | Description | | --------- | --- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Tech | d8 | Advanced Sensor Suite used for long-range surveillance and analysis. | | Chassis | d6 | Humanoid hardsuit layout with inline tank tread skates. | | Speed | d8 | Zippy. Those inline treads come in handy. | | Arms | d4 | Long range sniper rifle. Close range micro missile pod, limited primarily in punch by the size of the platform. | | Size | d4 | This is actually a high-tech hardsuit rather than a mech, a little bit larger than a normal human, 9 feet tall. | | Core | 30 | | **Name:** *Crusader* Does the book actually instruct you to give the mecha name? No. The examples have a name, but they don't actually walk you through the process. So here we are. There we go. Something a little different than perhaps might be expected. A fast, evasive hardsuit which doesn't carry much in the way of weaponry, but can get behind a target and give them a very hard time of it. Are these mechanics serviceable? Basically. But remember what I said earlier about the mechanics themselves. When making an arms check or a size check, there is no way for the pilot of this mech to be able to succeed wholly. There will always be a complication. In fact, it's 50-50 whether or not they're going to be overall successful or not. ### Software Much like the mecha, pilots have slots that must be filled with dice. Here they have four: | Skills | | --------- | | Talk | | Sneak | | Fortitude | | Will | Unlike the mix, you can only choose from two different stat arrays: well-balanced, which has a three d6, and a d4, or specialist, which has a d10, a d8, and two d4s. We also get told that upon the completion of a mission, pilots can increase the size of a die by one or take a new pilot stunt. We'll deal with stunts in a minute. Our pilot is going to be well-balanced because something around here should be. | Skills | Die | | --------- | --- | | Talk | d6 | | Sneak | d6 | | Fortitude | d4 | | Will | d6 | I decided to put our weak stat in fortitude, which is exactly what you think it is: the physical brawn of a pilot. This guy hangs out on the fringes, takes his snipes, does his recon, and stays out of sight. I suppose he needs a name. **Name:** Durer Hyphos #### Stunted Pilots, in addition, can either take a stunt from the list or work with the GM to create their own. After every successful mission, take another stunt. What kind of things are we talking about? **Do A Flip!** This allows a pilot to, once per combat encounter, automatically succeed on a dodge action against all attacks made against him in that turn. **Technowizard**. A Technowizard is a master of hacking and can extend their Hack skill to affect up to three additional enemies within the same zone once per combat encounter. What's a hack skill? That's a good goddamn question because there hasn't been one mentioned, has there? Remember how I said that the book opened with the combat mechanics? Well, the trick is that it doesn't actually open with all of the combat mechanics, or even a suggestion that there are more combat mechanics later—just some of them, whereas others come on page seven, including the things that you need to know before you can actually make a character completely. Smart, right? For the record, despite the fact that technowizard explicitly mentions hack being a skill, it's not a skill. It's an action which any mech can take to make a tech check on an enemy in medium range, which will allow them to downgrade components on the target. For the sake of keeping it simple, I'm not going to make up a new stunt. I'm just going to take one off the list. | Stunt | Description | | ------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Vanish | You have advanced training in stealth, and have modified your own rudimentary stealth suite. Once per combat, your mech becomes practically invisible for d4 rounds and cannot be targeted by adversaries. This can also be applied to a pilot with a smaller shield, lasting up to 4 hours. | This seems quantifiably better than **Do A Flip!** because it lasts for 1d4 rounds and keeps you from being targeted at all, rather than dodging for a single round. But hey, who's asking for consistency, right? ## Exunt And we're done. That's it. That is creation. Thank Hades, it's done already because there are things that irritate me, and one of them is unnecessarily bad organization of a text. You've probably already noticed that in a couple of my previous character creation challenge responses, and if you've been reading *Grim Tokens* for any length of time, you know that is a serious bugaboo. --- **Mech Name:** Crusader, high-speed recon hardsuit | Component | Die | Description | | --------- | --- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Tech | d8 | Advanced Sensor Suite used for long-range surveillance and analysis. | | Chassis | d6 | Humanoid hardsuit layout with inline tank tread skates. | | Speed | d8 | Zippy. Those inline treads come in handy.[^2] | | Arms | d4 | Long range sniper rifle. Close range micro missile pod, limited primarily in punch by the size of the platform. | | Size | d4 | This is actually a high-tech hardsuit rather than a mech, a little bit larger than a normal human, 9 feet tall. | | Core | 30 | | **Pilot Name:** Durer Hyphos | Skills | Die | | --------- | --- | | Talk | d6 | | Sneak | d6 | | Fortitude | d4 | | Will | d6 | | Stunt | Description | | ------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Vanish | You have advanced training in stealth, and have modified your own rudimentary stealth suite. Once per combat, your mech becomes practically invisible for d4 rounds and cannot be targeted by adversaries. This can also be applied to a pilot with a smaller shield, lasting up to 4 hours. | --- As a further example of how bad the editing is in this book, the first time we actually see health mentioned is on page 7, and it tells us that "each mech can take a certain amount of damage represented by hit points. Once a mech is reduced to 0 HP, it is considered disabled." Remember what I told you about the example mechs? That's right, it's mech health, not hit points. Now maybe you think, perhaps the writer was thinking about the pilots and their hit points, right? But pilots don't have hit points. Specifically, it is immediately noted that "pilots can take three hits from foes, adversaries, or complications. After the third hit, they are rendered unconscious or killed depending on the intent of the attack." So not even pilots have hit points. This sort of thing makes me grit my teeth because it's so unnecessary. You're probably also wondering why there wasn't a bit on gearing up. After all, there aren't too many mecha games which don't have purchasable gear, right? Well, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. In fact, on page 8, well after character creation, the list of equipment and its costs in credits is given. Do you know what's not given? That's right. Any starting amount of credits for characters. This is a list of equipment which has no way to buy it, nor is mentioned at any place during character generation. Again, gritting my teeth. It's this sort of game that reminds one that not all indie RPG games are good. The indie field is not a universal positive. There's actually a fair amount of crap out there. Is there a good game in here? Yes, I think there is. After three or four more text polishes and going over it with a fine-tooth comb, thinking about the game as a technical document and doing something more interesting with the setting. I'm not sure if I love it mechanically, but it could be an interesting game. Unfortunately, it's just that there are better games out there. And in fact, if you were looking for this sort of thing with a focus on mech combat on the table, there are several really good choices. I might start with *[[Starsmith - Mecha Mercs|Starsmith: Mecha Mercs]]* or *[[Mecha]]* , or even *[[Steel Rift]]* if you're willing to bolt on a light character layer, which is easy, all of which do theater of the mind mecha combat with layered pilot action a lot better. I think that's enough for today. Tomorrow, we're revisiting a genre that we've touched on already this month, and a game that was an inspiration for one of the ones that we've made a character for. Hang on to your hats. The city awaits. [^1]:  [^2]: Why yes, I absolutely love *[[Heavy Gear]]*, too.