# Ironclaw tags: #game/rpg/ironclaw ![[Ironclaw (cover).jpg|600]] **Ironclaw** is Jason Holmgren's and Sanguine Productions' long-running anthropomorphic-fantasy RPG — the game that, when a 2002 public poll asked which furry tabletop RPG was the favorite, won handily and has been grinning from the cover ever since. This is furry before the genre became a dirty word, and it wants to be taken seriously: anthropomorphic animals in a Renaissance-Italy-analog world of feuding noble houses, gunpowder creeping in beside the magic, and a point-buy dice-pool system with a working vocabulary rivaling [[Pathfinder]]. The second-edition **Omnibus** you'll actually buy is, bless its heart, a famously labyrinthine read — one prominent reviewer called it "the most infuriating RPG system I have ever reviewed," which measures both the depth and the disrepair in a single sigh. The love is undeniable; the table of contents has other ideas. ## Setting The world is **Calabria**, a feudal low-fantasy land modeled on Renaissance Italy and waking, a little grumbling, into an **Age of Reason** — flintlock and musket are arriving, the merchant class is rising, and old ways of government are being publicly questioned. Everyone here is an anthropomorphic animal, and the politics run through the **Four Great Noble Houses**, who feud ceaselessly for the empty throne of High King: - **Avoirdupois** (horses) — chivalrous, austere, deeply religious, and proud of it. Their army is the strongest in Calabria; their reluctance to adopt gunpowder and new machinery may be their undoing. Decidedly French in temper. - **Bisclavret** (wolves) — ambitious and pseudo-Scottish, who cast off their old ways to seize the resource-rich timberlands; control of lumber and shipbuilding has made them the house most hungry for progress and innovation. - **Doloreaux** (boars) — the most aggressive house, hemmed in by rivals with only enough farmland to subsist. Their state religion is the Old Faith, a fertility cult whose clergy is entirely female. - **Rinaldi** (grey foxes) — the legally reigning First Great House, who once ruled all of Calabria and count the nominal High King and the continent's biggest religion among their glories. Their titles have gone hollow, though: the true masters of their capital, the Free City of **Triskellian**, are the merchant Guild Masters. Beside the four houses roam the **Phelan** — the pagan wolf clans who kept the old, wild ways in the densely wooded west, complete with Druids and a legal system that makes the Church blink. There are dozens of Lesser and Minor Houses swearing fealty in between (bats who serve the Bisclavret, the goat-tribes of the Chevernaise who infuriate the Doloreaux, and so on). The players take the roles of **adventurers plucked from the new middle class** — folk with esoteric skills and real equipment above the common laborer, dropped into a powder-keg where the nobles play at war and are happy to use the talented and the hungry as pawns. ## Mechanics The engine is Sanguine's **Cardinal System**, a dice-pool affair where your abilities are measured in actual polyhedral dice rather than numbers on a scale. ### Traits, Skills, and Gifts Every character has four **Traits — Body, Speed, Mind, and Will — plus a Species and a Career**, each rated by a single die (d4–d12). You start with one d4, three d6s, and two d8s, and assign them across those six slots: the d8s are your strengths, the d4 your honest weakness. Then come **26 Skills**, each rated in **Marks** of training (you start with 13 Marks, maximum 3 in any one skill), and **Gifts** — special advantages the un-gifted don't get, of which you begin with three. Many Gifts are use-then-**Exhaust** abilities that must **Refresh** before they can be called on again. ### Character Creation Choose your **Species** (cat, fox, raccoon, horse, rat, squirrel, bear, and dozens more) and your **Career**; each contributes its die to three skill rows and bestows Gifts. Pick a **Personality** (a Gift that grants a bonus die to a certain behavior), a **Motto** your character lives by, a **Goal**, a **Name**, and your starting equipment. It's a genuinely open point-buy with room to breathe — provided you can find the rules you need, since the second edition's organization famously buries its own cross-references. ### Resolution For any action with an uncertain outcome you roll the dice of the relevant Trait plus Skill (plus any bonus dice for you or penalty dice for the opposition). The **highest showing die is your Score**, compared against a difficulty target, and you also count **successes** — under the **Rule of Four**, any die rolling 4 or better counts. Rolling all ones is a **Botch**; against an opponent it becomes a **Dice-Rolling Contest**, highest score wins, and multiple successes mean an **overwhelming victory**. Rotes let you assume a maximum result to skip a roll, and Limits cap your die size. ### Combat There are **no hit points**. Combat runs in **rounds** with side-based initiative; each combatant sets their turn to two **actions**, declares first and claims later, and can **Interrupt** on someone else's turn. Your attack roll doubles as your damage roll — every success is a point of damage, to which the weapon adds — and the standard melee defense is the **Counter-Attack**, where two combatants dice off and the winner hits the loser. Soak dice subtract damage. Wounds land as **status effects**, not a depleted health bar: damage can *injure* you, **Reel** you so you lose half a turn, *demoralize* you so you can't act, knock you down, or kill you — so a single good hit can decisively end a fight. ### Magic and Advancement All magic is delivered through Gifts, with no magic points: **elemental** Air/Earth/Fire/Water schools, Cognoscente, White Magic, Thaumaturgy, Necromancy, and **Atavism** — the Wilding Way. Spend **Experience** (earned by surviving and by good role-playing) to buy Skill Marks and Gifts, or trade Marks and Gifts back in for points to **retrain** a character you've grown tired of. ## Editions - **1st Edition (1999)** — *Ironclaw: Anthropomorphic Roleplaying Game*, plus house supplements covering the nations of Calabria: *House Rinaldi*, *House Avoirdupois*, *House Bisclavret*, *House Doloreaux*, and *Phelan*. A more traditional setup, revised over the years. *(Not in the library.)* - **2nd Edition: "Squaring the Circle" (2010)** — the **Ironclaw Omnibus**, a complete game in one volume combining the separate Player's Book and Host's Book, with the streamlined Cardinal rules (fewer Skills, more Gifts, flat costs, bonus/penalty dice). The 2E supplements are *Book of Mysteries*, *Book of Fools*, *Book of Jade*, *Book of Adventures*, *Book of Horn and Ivory*, *Book of Monsters*, and *Book of Corals*. *(In the library: the Omnibus, Book 6, Book of Fools, two character sheets, and cover/print assets.)* - **[[Jadeclaw]]** — Sanguine's *Eastern* companion game in the same Cardinal system, set in a Chinese-inspired concurrent world (Zhongguo). Standalone in its first edition; refolded into the 2E line as *Book of Jade*. *(In the library; a separate reference.)* ## References - [Ironclaw - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironclaw) - [IRONCLAW Omnibus: Squaring the Circle - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82132/IRONCLAW-Omnibus-Squaring-the-Circle) - [Ironclaw Book of Fools - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/89967/Ironclaw-Book-of-Fools) - [Sanguine Productions](http://www.sanguinegames.com)