# Ironsworn: Starforged *Created:* 2023-07-23, *Modified:* 2026-10-23 ![[Starforged (cover).jpg|600]] ![[Starforged Reference Guide (cover).jpg|600]] **Ironsworn: Starforged** drops you into the Forge — a globular cluster of young stars hanging 1,700 light years above the galactic plane, settled two centuries ago by refugees who fled a cataclysm in their home galaxy and have been living with the consequences ever since. You are one of the **Ironsworn**: a wanderer who takes a piece of iron in hand, swears a vow on it, and is then bound to see the thing through, with a starship, a background goal filed under *epic*, and a galaxy full of precursor ruins, competing factions, and creatures that would rather you didn't. It's Shawn Tomkin's standalone sci-fi follow-up to **[[Ironsworn]]**, and it does what that game did with rather more chrome: solo, co-op, or guided play, with the oracle tables carrying the improvisation. Tomkin Press raised about $348,000 from 6,782 Kickstarter backers in the spring of 2021; the digital edition landed in May 2022, and unlike its free predecessor this one is a paid game, around $20 for the PDFs. The licensing is worth reading twice. The rulebook's text, along with the asset cards and handouts, sits under **CC BY-NC-SA 4.0** — hack away, don't sell it. Selling it is covered by a second, narrower grant: the complete text of the **Reference Guide**, including the rules summaries, moves, oracles, and card text, is **CC BY 4.0**. That two-tier arrangement is why Starforged has both a deep free fan scene and a shelf of commercial third-party supplements, and it's a sharper piece of licensing than most open engines bother with. ## Setting The Forge is a bright island in a dark void — a globular cluster in orbit around the people's home galaxy, filled with interstellar nebula, dense clouds of interplanetary dust, strange energies, stellar storms, and unpredictable gravitational currents. The exodus arrived two hundred years ago and did not bring a map. The book splits the cluster into four regions: **Terminus**, where the people landed and settlements are commonest, though factions still compete for resources and caravans keep to charted paths; the **Outlands**, pushed into over the last few decades, where settlements are scattered and routes often uncharted; the **Expanse**, reached by only a few bold pioneers and usually cut off from everything; and the **Void** beyond the periphery, where there are only isolated stars and vast gulfs of nothing. Settlements are built on new worlds, but they rarely offer safe haven — conflicts rage, pirates work the spaceways, and older civilizations left dangerous knowledge behind in vaults and relics. Almost none of that is fixed, which is the point. Campaign setup runs on **truths**: fourteen categories — Cataclysm, Exodus, Communities, Iron, Laws, Religion, Magic, Communication and Data, Medicine, Artificial Intelligence, War, Lifeforms, Precursors, and Horrors — each offering three options you can choose, roll for, or rewrite outright. That's where a given Forge gets its character, and the book states the defaults plainly: this is a **retro-future** (technology a step past today's, or sometimes a step back, with resources scarce), an **unjust future** (those in power hoard resources and technology), a **far-flung future** (settlements isolated, starships fast but ponderously slow at cosmic scale), and — the line the whole thing rests on — "This is a hopeful future." You're the odd piece in it: a sworn hero rather than a hired gun. **Iron vows** are the engine of the fiction. Hold iron, declare a solemn promise, and your honor is bound to it; abandoning or recanting a vow is the worst sort of failure the setting recognizes. You write a **background vow** at epic rank before play begins, then spend the campaign swearing smaller ones and finding out what they cost. ## Mechanics ### The action roll Everything risky runs through one roll. Roll an **action die (1d6)**, add the relevant stat and any bonuses, then roll **two challenge dice (2d10)** and compare your action score to each separately. Beat both for a **strong hit**; beat one for a **weak hit**, which is success at a cost; beat neither and you **miss**, and the situation turns. Doubles on the challenge dice are a **match** — the book's prompt to add a twist, pleasant or otherwise. **Momentum** can be burned to replace your action score outright, which is the game's escape hatch when the dice have decided to be funny at your expense. ### Character creation Chargen is a run of guided steps rather than a point-buy minigame. Pick **two path assets**; write a **background vow** and give it epic rank; take the **starship** command vehicle asset and name the ship; take one more asset from the module, support vehicle, companion, or path lists; then arrange **3, 2, 2, 1, 1** across **Edge, Heart, Iron, Shadow, and Wits**. Condition meters start at 5, momentum at +2 with a maximum of +10 and a reset of +2, and any companion's health or vehicle's integrity starts at its maximum. The rulebook's **87 asset cards** come in six types — command vehicle, module, support vehicle, path, companion, and deed — and the **deed** assets are set aside at the start, because you're meant to earn those in play. ### Meters, momentum, and impacts Three condition meters — **Health**, **Spirit**, **Supply**, each 0 to +5 — cover body, nerve, and everything you're carrying. Supply is the abstract one: food, water, fuel, ammo, equipment, cargo, and upkeep collapsed into a single number, which is either elegant or quietly terrifying depending on your appetite for bookkeeping. **Momentum** runs from -6 to +10. Positive momentum can be burned to replace a roll; negative momentum is a trap, because if its value matches the number on your action die, that die is cancelled and your action score drops to stat plus adds alone. **Impacts** are how the game makes damage stick, and every marked impact costs a point of maximum momentum and drags your **momentum reset** from +2 to +1 (one impact) to 0 (two or more). **Misfortunes** — wounded, shaken, unprepared — block the matching condition meter from rising until they're cleared. **Vehicle troubles** — battered, cursed — sit on the ship rather than the character, and only bite while you're aboard. **Burdens** — doomed, tormented, indebted — come out of Face Death, Face Desolation, and Overcome Destruction, and clear only by resolving the quest they bind you to. **Lasting effects** — permanently harmed, traumatized — never clear at all. That last pair is the game's way of writing a scar onto the sheet; *cursed* is its way of making sure the ship gets one too. ### Progress, legacy, and advancement Quests, expeditions, connections, and fights each run on a **progress track** ranked from troublesome up to epic. You mark progress as you resolve moves, then make a **progress roll** against the filled boxes when you try to finish the thing — a roll that ignores momentum, so no amount of banked luck rescues a half-done vow. Advancement runs off three **legacy tracks**: **quests**, **bonds**, and **discoveries**. Completing a vow, forging a bond, or making a discovery earns a legacy reward; four ticks fill a box, and each newly filled box pays **2 experience** through the Earn Experience move. Experience buys assets — 3 for a new one, 2 to upgrade one you have. Fill a legacy track completely and you can wipe it and start again, which is the game's way of saying the story outlives the character sheet. ### Combat Combat is about objectives, not hit points. **Enter the Fray** sets one or more objectives with ranks and decides whether you start **in control** or **in a bad spot**: a strong hit takes both control and momentum, a weak hit takes one, a miss starts you in trouble. From control you **Gain Ground** or **Strike**; from a bad spot you **React Under Fire** or **Clash**. Once the objective is within reach, **Take Decisive Action** resolves it as a progress roll. If a fight doesn't deserve scene-by-scene attention, **Battle** settles the whole thing in a single roll; if you're beaten, **Face Defeat** lets you abandon the objective without rolling and pay the price. Foes get no statblocks — a rank and some fiction — because the game stays player-facing all the way down. ### Starships and expeditions Your ship is a second character in card form: a **command vehicle** asset with an integrity track, upgraded by spending experience on **module** assets — a medbay, a missile bay, whatever the campaign turns out to need. Ship actions run on the same engine, with **Battle Stations!** opening an engagement and **Withstand Damage** when the hull starts taking it. Travel is its own subsystem: **Set a Course** to plot the jump, **Undertake an Expedition** to fill a progress track segment by segment, **Explore a Waypoint** when you stop somewhere, **Finish an Expedition** to learn whether you arrive intact. Interstellar waypoints are where the oracle tables earn their keep. ### Oracles, clocks, and safety tools The oracle engine is why this plays without a referee: **Ask the Oracle** for yes/no answers weighted by likelihood, descriptor-and-focus tables for when you need a noun and an adjective, and full generators for planets, settlements, starships, characters, creatures, factions, derelicts, precursor vaults, and location themes. Two outside ideas get folded in — **clocks** for progress made by factions and threats the characters didn't drive, and **scene challenges** for extended non-combat tests. Session moves handle the table rather than the fiction: **Set a Flag** marks content you don't want in play, and **Change Your Fate** reframes or redirects something that lands badly. ## Editions **Ironsworn: Starforged** is Shawn Tomkin's own book, published under his **Tomkin Press** imprint, and there is one edition of it — a 404-page, lavishly illustrated rulebook released in May 2022 and kept in print since with errata rather than rules changes: - **Ironsworn: Starforged** (2022) — the core rulebook: 404 pages, illustrated throughout, and the only version of the game's text there has ever been. *In the library.* Print copies go out as the **Deluxe Edition** hardcover through Modiphius, which is the same book in a different binding. The digital edition ships portrait and two-page-spread PDFs and tracks the physical printings; it's currently brought up to date with the fourth (November 2025), whose changes are page references and corrections rather than mechanics. ## Supplements Everything else on the Starforged shelf adds to the core book rather than replacing it — including Tomkin's own reference materials, which are the core's content repackaged for the table. ### Official - **Starforged: Reference Guide** (2022) — the 127-page wirebound companion: every move, the complete oracle set, a rules summary, clocks, scene challenges, and a glossary. It's the book that stays open while the rulebook stays shut, and the one whose text carries the commercial CC BY license. *In the library.* - **Starforged: Asset Deck** (2022) — the 87 asset cards as a physical poker-sized deck, with printable sheets and single-card pages in the digital edition. *In the library.* - **Starforged: Playkit** (2022) — the playing surface: character sheet, moves reference, progress tracks, and a stack of worksheets, free from Tomkin Press. *In the library.* - **Starforged: Spacefaring Interludes** (2025) — a free four-page patch for downtime in transit, borrowing the interlude concept from **[[Starforged - Sundered Isles|Sundered Isles]]**: a replacement Spacefaring Waypoints table where an interlude is a possible result, a separate Cosmic Matter subtable so asteroid fields stop crowding the scene out, and an Interludes table split between traveling alone and traveling with crew. *In the library.* - **[[Starforged - Sundered Isles|Starforged: Sundered Isles]]** (2024) — the seafaring expansion: 61 new assets, ship and crew management, a cursed die rolled alongside oracle results, the optional Wealth & Treasury rules, and an archipelago's worth of generators. *In the library.* ### Fan supplements - **[[Starsmith]]** — Eric Bright's "Play Every Role" line, released free under CC BY: *Expanded Oracles* (2022) triples the oracle tables across some 300 pages, and *Cultures* (2023) builds coherent societies on Hofstede's six cultural axes. *In the library.* - **[[Starsmith - Mecha Mercs|Starsmith: Mecha Mercs]]** — the setting-definer of the Starsmith line: mech chassis, corporate warfare, and mercenary jobs whose pay never quite covers the repairs. *In the library.* - **[[Ancient Wonders]]** — Ludic Pen's generator for solar systems, planets that actively try to kill you, and megastructures left by aliens who were clearly overcompensating. *In the library.* - **[[Legacy Iron]]** — Samuel Rondón Acevedo's asset expansion, held as print-and-play: asset sheets in A4 and Letter, a tuckbox, and wallpapers. *In the library.* - **[[Witchery for Starforged - World Truths Edition|Witchery for Starforged]]** — a properly-licensed witch port: covens, hearths, essence, and spellcraft grafted onto the Forge. *In the library.* - **[[Steelforged]]** — a 182-page high-fantasy oracle collection that grafts knights, planes, and silversteel artifacts onto the sci-fi chassis. *In the library.* - **[[Knight Frame]]** — a five-page mech supplement with a prototype **frame joust** dogfight engine; a Starforged 2022 Jam entry. *In the library.* - **[[Galactic Oracles]]** — a nine-page, uncredited set of Star Wars tables, for pointing the Forge at a galaxy far, far away. *In the library.* - **[[Operation Void Shell]]** — Marcin Zawadzki's two-page quest starter, a corporate-thicket hook built around a black hole and a vault nobody has returned from. *In the library.* ## Related products - **[[Revenant]]** (2024) — Killian Gillespie's standalone survival-horror game, built on the Starforged chassis rather than inside it: enclaves, scavenging, and an apocalypse whose shape you decide at the table. Games that share the engine without building on Starforged itself live on the **Ironsworn** page. ## Tools & companions - **[[Travelers]]** — Colin Kloecker's fold-and-cut pocket reference cards; the **Traveler's Starforged** deck (v1.0, 2024) is the sci-fi set, with an Adventure Moves add-on. *In the library.* - **[Starswoosh](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/443900/starswoosh-an-ironsworn-starforged-quick-reference-for-your-ereader)** — gamesbyfelix's hyperlinked quick reference built for e-readers, packing the moves, oracles, and assets into something a Kindle can hold. *In the library.* - **[[Pocketforge]]** — the unofficial companion app for the whole family: tables, moves, characters, and progress tracking in one place. - **[Stargazer](https://nboughton.uk/apps/stargazer)** — Nick Boughton's browser-based character keeper and play app for Starforged, the sci-fi sibling to his Ironsworn **Iron Journal**. ## References - [Ironsworn: Starforged — Tomkin Press (official)](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn-starforged) - [Ironsworn: Starforged — Digital Edition on itch.io](https://shawn-tomkin.itch.io/ironsworn-starforged) - [Ironsworn: Starforged — DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/391653/ironsworn-starforged) - [Ironsworn: Starforged retail line — Modiphius](https://modiphius.net/en-us/pages/ironsworn-starforged) - [Ironsworn licensing explained — Tomkin Press](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/licensing) - [Take your role-playing game to the stars — Polygon review](https://www.polygon.com/reviews/2022/6/14/23165738/ironsworn-starforged-ttrpg-review-shawn-tomkin-pbta) - [A Review of Ironsworn: Starforged — EN World](https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-review-of-ironsworn-starforged.688914) - [Review: Ironsworn Starforged — Halfway Station 3.0](https://hws3.wordpress.com/2022/02/08/review-ironsworn-starforged) - [Ironsworn: Starforged Review — Croaker's RPG Corner](https://croakerrpgcorner.blogspot.com/2022/09/ironsworn-starforged-review-solo-game.html) - [The Bad Spot — Starforged actual play, seasons 1–3](https://www.youtube.com/@thebadspot) - [Starforged actual play — The Solo RolePlayers Podcast #11](https://soloroleplayerspodcast.podbean.com/e/11-actual-play-starforged) - [Ironsworn community resources — Tomkin Press](https://tomkinpress.com/pages/community-resources)