# IronSpheres tags: #game/rpg/ironspheres #game/rpg/ironsworn ![[IronSpheres (cover).jpg|600]] **IronSpheres** is what results when someone raised on *Mage: the Ascension* looks at **[[Ironsworn]]**'s grim, restrained ritual magic and concludes it's just not complicated enough. Matthew Potter (NeonPico) imports the full esoterica — Spheres, Focus and the Arts, Awakening, Paradox, Quintessence, Tass, and Nodes — into a game whose entire design thesis was "fewer moving parts," released under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (last updated November 2024). If Ironsworn's magic is quiet folklore, this is gnostic heresy with a dice pool — trading flashy fireballs for the slippery business of *belief that makes itself true*, and demanding you keep a straight face while you're at it. ## The Shape of the Magic The book leans hard into the Mage vocabulary, and it's all here: **Spheres** as the domains of reality you manipulate, **Focus and the Arts** as the how of your casting, **Awakening** as how a mage comes into their power, and **Paradox** — the universe pushing back when you visibly break the rules. It walks through **character creation and development** for a mage, gives **example paradigms** (the belief-systems that color how a mage understands their power), and spends real care on **understanding the limits of magic**, because a setting where mages can do anything is a setting that falls apart. ## Mechanics and Worldbuilding Mechanically it adds a **magical energy** layer, **magical artifacts**, and the classic resource trio of **Quintessence, Tass, and Nodes** — the stuff magic runs on and where you tap it from. A chunk of the book is devoted to **world-building**: **truth tables** for Awakening, mages, and Paradox, plus the **Spirit Worlds** as a place worth exploring. Around all that spin **oracles** — of Practices, of Instruments, of **Mystic Backlashes** — and a set of **new moves** to run it all through the standard Ironsworn action roll. It's a coherent, thorough attempt to make reality-bending magic feel like it has rules without ever quite behaving. ## Editions - **IronSpheres** (updated 11/13/24) — the main book plus an assets/print edition. *In the library.* ## References - [IronSpheres — Itch.io](https://neonpico.itch.io/ironspheres)