# Harry Potter Meets I Spy? We Can Do That! Ironsworn+HP+50's Spies, Go! tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/ironsworn ![[HP in Prague.png]] I sometimes go on at great length about how much I like **[[Ironsworn]]** as a game design but I don't talk about the fact that the licensing for the game, for anyone to make things based off of it and even sell them, is so open. It's led to an environment where there are dozens of independent creators who take the core experience of **Ironsworn** and push it in different directions, whether it's [reproducing the feel of play of **Ars Magica**](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/368750/Arcanum-High-Magic-for-Ironsworn) or [adding the ability to manage communities and organizations](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/419256/ironsworn-reign) or just [specific mechanics to cover light levels and how that might affect your dungeon crawling](https://jaderavens.itch.io/darkest-delves).[^dd] Great stuff, and it leads to a very happy community. But you're not just limited to bolting things on to the side of Ironsworn. You can completely move the experience from effectively low fantasy and do whatever you want. Tomkins himself did just that when he released **[[Ironsworn - Starforged|Starforged]]**, going from low fantasy to extremely high tech sci-fi. It doesn't take hundreds of pages and dozens of art commissions to do that, though. There's an entire space of straightforward hacks of the core mechanics which don't change very much at all but reskin the entire experience to another place and time. I recently stumbled on one of those called **[Vigilance](https://maxb.fm/vigilance)**. It's not exactly what I would have been looking for myself. While I do quite enjoy a nice period spy movie or TV show, it wouldn't normally be my first stop – but putting it together with [[Harry Potter]] (*the boy who lived*) in the 50s? Setting it up as the United States magical Congress versus the Cold War Russians? That's evocative. That's some fascinating stuff. > [!quote] > > **Vigilance** is an RPG set in the 1950s in the Harry Potter universe. In it, the MACUSA and the M.S.S.R. are engaged in a high-stakes game of espionage and deceit, as each tries to get an edge over the other via magical, human, or intelligence-based means. Rather than put it out as a PDF, **Vigilance** exists as a website with a rather minimalist aesthetic but easy maneuver, which really highlights how little you actually have to change to make **Ironsworn** do whatever you want it to. Assets are, logically enough, the big deal, adding some in to deal with Harry Potter-style magic and a little bit of spy action. Of the core mechanics there are only two significant changes. *Iron* becomes *power*, covering magical potency as well as emotional and physical intensity, and rather than the driving loop of the game being *Going on a Journey*, instead you *Solve a Mystery* – using effectively the same set of moves, only recharacterized. ![[Vigilence - Hex Inventor Asset.png]] That's it. That's the game. I love to be able to show people this sort of thing, where a game can be fairly radically reskin with an extremely minimal amount of effort, turning it into just exactly the game a specific person wants to play. Maybe you are one of those specific people. If so, you can go check it out over at the website: https://maxb.fm/vigilance Absolutely worth your time. ![[Harry Potter - Spy.png]] [^dd]: This is a surprisingly interesting case because it's not something that I would actually want to use in my game but I picked **Darkest Delves** up because the idea of having a depletable resource that helps push forward with greater pressure is fascinating. There is the equivalent for **Starforged** called **[Darkest Derelicts](https://jaderavens.itch.io/darkest-derelicts)** which does the same thing for power drain and oxygen. Tantalizing.