# Ironsworn *Created:* 2023-07-23, *Modified:* 2026-10-23 ![[Ironsworn (cover).jpg|600]] ![[Lodestar (2025 Expanded) (cover).jpg|600]] **Ironsworn** is Shawn Tomkin's game of sworn quests in a cold country, and the one that made solo play look like a deliberate design choice rather than a workaround. You're an Ironlander on a rugged peninsula at the edge of the known world, bound to vows you can't wriggle out of — walking untracked wilds, fighting things you'd rather not, and forging bonds with communities that have every reason to keep their doors barred. It runs solo, co-op, or with a guide, the complete digital edition is free, and a Gold ENNIE for Best Free Game in 2019 is about the least surprising trophy in the cabinet. Tomkin released the core text under **CC BY-NC-SA 4.0** — free to download, free to hack, not free to sell — with the **Ironsworn SRD**, the asset-card text, and the oracle tables carved out under **CC BY 4.0** for commercial work. That split is why this engine has both a very deep free fan scene and a smaller shelf of things people charge money for. ## Setting The Ironlands are a grim, isolated peninsula at the world's edge, dotted with scattered communities that have every reason to keep their doors barred. The engine leans on **truths** — ten categories, from the Old World and Iron to Legacies, Communities, Leaders, Mysticism, Religion, Firstborn, Beasts, and Horrors, each offering three options you can choose or rewrite — so the Ironlands are less a fixed setting than a bag of cold, dangerous ingredients you're invited to rearrange. There's no world-saving chosen-one business here; you're a person who swore an oath and is now stuck with the consequences, be they heroic, Pyrrhic, or just very expensive. The tone is dark fantasy in the folkloric register: no sprawling metaplot, no celebrity-NPC pantheon, just a harsh country and the vows people make to survive its attention. ## Mechanics ### The action roll The engine's one real dice move is famously clean: roll an **action die (1d6)**, add your stat and any bonuses, and roll **two challenge dice (2d10)**. Compare your action score to each challenge die individually — it must *beat* a die to succeed against it. Beat both for a **strong hit**, beat one for a **weak hit** (success with a cost), beat neither for a **miss**. It's the same risk-resolution machinery **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Starforged]]** would later bolt onto spaceships, and it needs no referee; the oracle tables do the refereeing for free. ### Character creation Fast, and mostly conceptual. Envision the character, name them, arrange **3, 2, 2, 1, 1** across **Edge, Heart, Iron, Shadow, and Wits**, set Health, Spirit, and Supply to +5, set momentum to +2 with a maximum of +10 and a reset of +2, mark up to three background **bonds**, and pick **three assets**. Then write a **background vow** at extreme or epic rank, envision the inciting incident that put you on the road, and swear your first vow. That's the whole procedure — a character arrives with a reason to be adventuring rather than a shopping list. ### Stats, momentum, and debilities Health, Spirit, and Supply are 0 to +5 tracks, and Supply is shared: while you travel together, everyone adjusts it when one of you does. **Momentum** runs from -6 to +10 and tracks how the quest is going. Positive momentum can be burned to replace your action score outright; negative momentum is a trap, because when its value matches the number on your action die, that die is cancelled and you're left rolling on stat and adds alone. **Debilities** are the damage that sticks. They come in three groups — **conditions** (wounded, shaken, unprepared, encumbered), **banes** (maimed, corrupted), and **burdens** (cursed, tormented) — and each marked debility costs a point of maximum momentum and drags your momentum reset from +2 to +1 (one) to 0 (two or more). Conditions clear with rest and recovery; banes — maimed, corrupted — are permanent; burdens — cursed, tormented — clear only by resolving the quest they tied you to. The same design shows up in **Starforged** under the name *impacts*, with the categories rearranged. ### Assets, bonds, and advancement Assets are poker-sized cards with three abilities apiece, in four types: **companions, paths, combat talents, and rituals**. Gear mostly lives inside them — a combat talent is where your fighting style and weapon sit — so there's no inventory minigame, and upgrades are bought with experience one ability at a time. **Bonds** run on a single progress track for your relationships rather than a fresh sheet per person: Forge a Bond with a person or community and mark it, then lean on those ties later — and Test Your Bond when one is strained. That track is the game's entire social system, which is either admirably lean or suspiciously convenient depending on how much you like relationship mechanics. Experience comes from Fulfill Your Vow, 1 to 5 points by the rank of the quest; **Advance** spends 3 for a new asset or 2 to upgrade one. ### Combat Fights are objectives with a progress track. **Enter the Fray** sets the objective and the track and tells you whether you start in control or in a bad spot. From control you **Strike** or **Secure an Advantage**; from a bad spot you **Clash** and hope. **Turn the Tide** is the once-per-fight gamble: steal back the initiative, add +1 to whatever you do with it, and if that move misses, the consequences get teeth. **End the Fight** resolves the whole thing as a progress roll, so a fight you've half-won is a fight you can still lose. **Battle** handles the skirmishes that don't deserve a scene. Foes have no statblocks; a rank and a description do the work. ### Vows, progress, and oracles Questing runs on **progress tracks**: each sworn vow, journey, and fight gets a track ranked from *Troublesome* to *Epic*, which you fill by chipping away at the thing and finally **resolve** when you've genuinely seen it through. Underpinning it all is a vast cloud of **oracle tables** — for people, places, beasts, and complications — so the story keeps generating itself. It's a game explicitly built to be played *to find out what happens*, which is why the solo hobby copied its homework. **Delve** adds the same machinery for places: a site gets a theme, a domain, denizens, and a rank, and you work it depth by depth. ## Editions **Ironsworn** is Tomkin's own book, self-published and given away as a complete digital edition; print copies are hardcover or softcover, 6×9, with black-and-white interiors. There is one edition of the game: - **Ironsworn** (2018; second printing updated June 2019) — the 270-page core rulebook. *In the library.* The 2019 file is the current one: errata folded in, no revised rules, and it remains the game. A second edition, tentatively titled **Ironsworn: Legacies**, went into open playtest in 2026, but Tomkin is calling it an "alternate edition" rather than a replacement — the original stays available, and there's no plan to convert **Starforged** to the new engine. ## Supplements ### Official - **[[Ironsworn - Delve|Ironsworn: Delve]]** (2020) — the expedition expansion, and the reason the game has a proper dungeon-crawl mode. A **site** gets a theme, a domain, denizens, and a rank, and you work through it with Discover a Site, Delve the Depths, Find an Opportunity, Reveal a Danger, Check Your Gear, Locate Your Objective, and Escape the Depths. It also brings new foes, campaign-level threats, artifacts, and a fresh pile of oracles. ENNIE winner for Best Supplement. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Lodestar|Ironsworn: Lodestar]]** (expanded edition 2025) — the free reference accessory: every move, the oracle tables, a rules summary, and, in this edition, the key content from **Delve** plus new and revised tables and extra options. Ninety-nine pages, built to lie open on the table. *In the library.* ### Fan supplements - **[[Ironsmith Flavor Packs|Ironsmith: Flavor Packs]]** (2021) — Eric Bright's whole-*setting* reskins of the Ironlands: five lands, each with a fresh mythology, assets, and quest starters instead of the one grim peninsula. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Arcanum|Ironsworn: Arcanum]]** — high-magic supplement with flexible, narrative spellcraft in the **Ars Magica** mold, trading Ironsworn's quiet ritualism for willful shaping-of-creation. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Badlands|Ironsworn: Badlands]]** (2020, v0.3) — Keith Stetson's Western re-dress: the Ironlands become a frontier, vows a cowboy's contract, and the oracles all go ten-gallon. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Bronzebound|Ironsworn: Bronzebound]]** (2023) — a Bronze Age Greek-epic setting (Odyssey and Iliad territory) from the first Ironsworn Jam: heroes, monsters, and meddling gods, with more dice rolls and fewer hexameters. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Oathbound|Ironsworn: Oathbound]]** (2024) — a skirmish-and-party-management layer for the sworn-vow chassis: you lead a band against a hostile land, and the book warns you up front that you will fail. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Reign|Ironsworn: Reign]]** (2024) — Killian Gillespie's settlement-management take: a founding-history oracle, new moves, and resources so your sworn hero finally has a home to run. *In the library.* - **[[Ironsworn - Winterhall|Ironsworn: Winterhall]]** — Caleb Plew's compact "put down roots" home supplement, which the original **Reign** openly cites as its inspiration. *In the library.* - **[[Ironswornified - The Treasure of the Hideous One|Ironswornified]]** — Marcin Zawadzki's three-page ready-to-play quest starter, a one-shot the hobby can actually finish. *In the library.* - **[[Spellforge]]** (2024) — Marcin Zawadzki's magic-texture supplement: spells, chaos magic, and quest starters for Ironsworn, and via the shared engine for **Starforged**. *In the library.* - **[[Darkest Delves]]** (v1.2, 2023) — a six-page torchlight-and-darkness ruleset for **Delve**, making the dark genuinely dreadful, with quick reference, torchlight sheets, and the Classic Dice Hack. *In the library.* - **[[IronScrolls]]** — a four-page conversion of *Skyrim*'s Tamriel into **truths**, because of course someone did. *In the library.* - **[[IronSpheres]]** — *Mage: the Ascension*'s Spheres, Paradox, and Quintessence bolted onto an engine whose whole thesis was fewer moving parts. *In the library.* ## Related products - **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Ironsworn: Starforged]]** (2022) — the standalone sci-fi sequel and the family's second engine. Its own supplements — Reference Guide, Asset Deck, Playkit, Spacefaring Interludes, and the **[[Starforged - Sundered Isles|Sundered Isles]]** expansion — along with its fan scene, are all covered on that page. *In the library.* - **[[Iron Valley]]** (2023) — the cozy one: a Stardew-flavored game built on the engine, where the stakes are farming, crafting, and a small community rather than the end of the world. *In the library.* - **[[Elegy]]** — a full vampire game built on the Ironsworn chassis; as much a standalone game as **Iron Valley**, with its own family of editions and supplements. *In the library.* - **[[Winsome]]** — the micro-hack: two moves, methods in place of stats, the sworn-vow engine slimmed to pocket size. *In the library.* ## Tools & companions - **[[Travelers]]** — Colin Kloecker's fold-and-cut pocket reference cards, with a set for this engine and one for **Starforged**. *In the library.* - **[[Ironswoosh]]** — the eReader quick reference for Ironsworn, the fantasy sibling to **Starswoosh**. - **[[Pocketforge]]** — the unofficial companion app for the whole family: tables, moves, characters, and progress tracking in one place. ## References - [Ironsworn — Tomkin Press (official)](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn) - [Ironsworn — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/238369/ironsworn) - [Ironsworn — Digital Edition on itch.io](https://shawn-tomkin.itch.io/ironsworn) - [Ironsworn licensing explained — Tomkin Press](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/licensing) - [Sneak Peek: Tomkin is reimagining Ironsworn for a new "alternate edition" — Rascal](https://www.rascal.news/sneak-peek-shawn-tomkin-is-reimagining-ironsworn-for-a-new-alternate-edition) - [Review: Ironsworn — Halfway Station 3.0](https://hws3.wordpress.com/2022/01/25/review-ironsworn/) - [Me, Myself and Die! Season 2 — Ironsworn actual play](https://www.memyselfanddie.com/youtube/season2) - [Ask the Oracle — the official Ironsworn podcast](https://ironsworn.podbean.com/) - [Ironsworn community resources — Tomkin Press](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/community-resources)