# Fiction Forward Ironsworn Delving tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/ironsworn ![[Delve (cover).jpg|300]] Once again, I'm putting something over here, which was inspired by someone's question on X. But it is at least an interesting question. --- ![](https://x.com/leighbhrogan/status/2052245535860597197) > [!info] Commentary > Oh yeah, the embed won't be translated. Let's grab the translated version. I don't think many of you read Japanese. ![[Novel game-like way of playing with TRPG (illo).png]] This is where I step in and talk about the fact that high-level slash fiction-directed tabletop RPGs have done the dungeon delve as an abstract space on multiple occasions. But I think the best mechanical implementation that I've seen, perhaps unsurprisingly, happens in *[[Ironsworn]]* (https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn), particularly in the *Delve* (https://tomkinpress.com/pages/ironsworn-delve) expansion. It has an entire subsystem for generating exploration spaces which have a generated process of building it out, but always with an eye to moving toward a purpose or reason that you came into the site in the first place. One of the secrets that makes this work is that there's an entire process by which you envision the delve in the first place. First, you discover the site, and by that I don't mean the actual physical location, but you hear of it. This is where you choose its theme and domain and give it a rank. The theme and domain are actually a set of descriptive possibilities, each of which comes with its own table of content, which create a sense of specificity. You aren't necessarily limited by these themes and domains, but they do provide an easy way to classify quite a lot of things. Each of them have their own descriptors and so on. Once you've discovered it, then you actually explore the site by doing the delve the depths move. Depending on the result of the move, you discover different things, perhaps reveal a danger or an opportunity. You might need to look and see if you have a specific piece of gear to deal with a problem that comes up. You find your objective and then you escape. Particularly when it comes to the more cinematic/novelistic approach to delving, I find that this works far better than having a pre-established story and a pre-established map that is driven by what somebody else wants you to do. Instead, the first thing that you figure out when you decide to delve the depths is what exactly it is that you're trying to accomplish. Why are you there? What are you doing? If your goal is to clear the delve of monsters so that people can come in and essentially retake the place, that's a very different goal than going into the delve in order to find a particular magic weapon to allow you to deal with some other thing going on in your world. Those two are different from going into a delve in order to find an exit on the other side so that you can get to a place in time and not be late. (With this system, it's really easy to do the *Lord of the Rings* trip through Moria because there's a clear purpose like there is in most literature. The point is to get out and make it through the other side to the exit rather than going down and killing things for their treasure.) Overall, I think Ironsworn is probably one of the best games for doing fiction first fantasy, and it doesn't hurt that you can have the core book and the rules update lodestone for absolutely free. *Delve* will actually cost you money to pick up, but some things are worth it. --- Just as an example, let's walk through the first steps that you would take under this system. You've decided to play a Ranger who is specialized in the longbow. You've heard that there are some corrupted Druids in the deep part of the dark forest nearby, and you've resolved to disrupt their ritual. This is great. We know up front that it's got to be a Tanglewood because that's the closest thing to what we envision. The location to be. But we don't actually have a theme that strikes us up front, so we roll for it. > d100: 26 > > **Delve theme**: Fortified. Okay, it's a fortified Tanglewood. The Druids have built up defenses. Fantastic. If it hadn't been something that fit or we couldn't imagine how to make it work, we could have rolled something else or selected it, but this will work. We don't really need multiple themes or domains for this. It's going to be straightforward. It needs a name too, and I don't feel like being that creative, so I'm just going to roll one up. > **Delve name**: Bramble of Blades. That's actually the result of a few rolls, but that's not important right now. The Bramble of Blades is where the druids are set up. Great. This is already looking like it's going to be a tight challenge. Speaking of challenges, we need to decide what the site's rank is. That is, how much work is it going to be to get through it? There are five steps that it can be, from troublesome to epic. We don't want something that hard, but we want something that's going to be more than just a couple of scenes, so we will make it a **dangerous** site. That means we will make two progress on the ten-slot track when we advance our interests. Five really important things have to happen before we are fully done with the Bramble, but we can always try to finish before the track is completely full. It just risks things being more difficult or different than we expected. That's okay. At this point, we would also usually go through and figure out what kind of things that we're likely to run into in there. Maybe start putting a table together. But we are just going to wing it for the purposes of this discussion. *Ironsworn* enemies don't really have stats in the traditional sense. They just have things that they do and sometimes how tough they are. All right, we're ready. You've made it to the entrance to the dark and forbidding wood. The bramble looms before you. Huge trees stretch out in two directions with a small path that leads into the darkness. You've shown up in the morning, but you can tell it's extremely shadowy within, perhaps more than would be explained naturally. Is that darkness supernatural? I don't know. Luckily, we have a way to find out by simply asking the Oracle in the game. > **Is the darkness supernatural?** > **Ask the Oracle** (50%): 40, No. Fair enough. The darkness is not conjured by the druids, but purely natural. Next up, we must, in fact proceed. What does the first area within the bramble look like? We could simply decide. Or we can roll on the theme and domain tables. Let's do that. > **Delve Bramble of Blades' area** > > Area: Fortified Tanglewood > > Feature: Something unusual or unexpected Somehow we managed to stumble on something fairly rare in the first area. You know, when I'm rolling dice for myself, this never happens. Let's consult the Oracle for some inspiration. We have plenty of things that we can sort of use. I think for this one, we're actually going to go with descriptor and focus. > **Descriptor**: Blighted. > > **Focus**: Storage . Blighted storage. All right, that's a little bit of inspiration. Just within the tree line, you come to an area which has clearly been used to help stage supplies for the Druid camp deeper within. However, you can see that even though these are boxes and barrels which have been moved in quite recently, their wood and iron bands are very fresh, newly made, but they are overgrown with vines and plant life to the point where you can't rightfully imagine how anyone is moving this stuff. There is a broken wagon sitting beside them. Its axle in bad need of mending, and it too is overgrown. That's the area. Now, how are you moving through this? That will define how we make the delve the depths roll. Are you hurrying through? Are you being stealthy, or are you using your woodland expertise? You're a ranger and spend a lot of time in the woods, so it makes sense for you to use your wits. We'll just assume that your wits are +2, and we'll make a delve the depths roll. > **Delve the Depths** > > **Miss**: 5 + 2 (wits) = **7** vs **10**, **7**. There we go. That looks more like my dice lock. A miss on Delve the Depths means that we need to reveal a danger. > **Delve danger**: Denizen ready to sound the alarm. Well, bugger. One of the Druid servitor beasts, something like a goblin but made out of roots and vines, an animated plant, is working at unloading the broken cart. Not particularly successfully, you note, as you walk in from the bright area beyond the glade into the darkness. It sees you and prepares to sprint off to alert the Druid camp. Now, normally this would be where you made the decision whether or not to go after it, what to do about it, or where to go. But I think you can see how this plays out. If the servitor gets away, we might set a timer clock for the camp going to full alert and maybe even increasing the challenge rating of the delve because of it. Notice that we focus on areas. If this was a dungeon, this could have been a series of rooms of corrupted storage, which you move through in an abstract way. Storage room after storage room full of rotten and rusting gear, for example. It doesn't have to be just one particular room. Anyway, I've gone on probably far longer than I needed to, but I think you get the idea. Just dealing with an abstract approach to spaces in dungeon crawling and putting the fiction and its requirements first go a long way toward addressing a lot of those problems. And making it far more narrative. --- Honestly, running through this just reminds me I need to sit down and get back to some of the actual plays that we have going on or could have going on. It's all about time management.