Using Ironsworn Delve with Forbidden Lands
Posted: Mon 21 Sep 2020, 12:47
Ironsword Delve is a supplement for the Ironsworn RPG by Shawn Tomkin. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/30 ... worn-Delve
It is essentially a dynamic adventure site generation system - you pair a theme card (eg. "haunted" or "Infested") with a domain card (eg "tangle wood" or "Ice reach"). Together the cards create two random tables, one for features and another for dangers (denizens, or environmental hazards). This uses percentile dice. The Ironsworn RPG itself is more narrative and rules-lite than Forbidden Lands, but I though that I'd try using Delve to generate adventure locations on the fly without the need for huge amounts of preparation beforehand.
Here was the scenario - the player (solo) was entering a forest and I decided she was going to encounter a nest of giant spiders. I picked up the "infested" theme and the "tangle wood" domain. I decided play would progress as follows:
* in order to 'escape' the area, the player would need to roll a number of base 'progress' dice and score at least one success.
* to earn these dice, she would need to explore: every success rolled on the explore roll earned progress, and progress earned dice. Every skull rolled meant she had to face danger, and a roll on the 'dangers' section of the delve cards.
* a fail on the escape roll would lose you a dice - so you couldn't just keep trying again and again with the same roll. You would need to explore again to find the way out.
* I allowed pushing for all rolls - skulls meant a roll on the dangers table (though I allowed the player to take attribute damage instead if they wanted).
* an explore roll was a Survival roll, but in retrospect I think I'd allow any other reasonable skill roll such as Stealth or Scouting.
The relationship between the number of successes and the number of 'escape' dice these eared is vital! I chose 1 escape dice for every 2 successes on the explore roll. This had the feeling of a small-ish site - I think the player explored about 4 or 5 areas before banking 8 successes and rolling 4 dice to escape (she has pretty high survival skills). You can control the length (size) of the adventure by changing this ratio.
At one point I rolled a 99, which meant a transition to a new theme. I rolled randomly for this, and cam up with 'fortified' which I interpreted as a weird overgrown area of the forest where the trees were as densely packed as a stockade fence. Here was the lair of the mother spider.
Delve has a denizens matrix that you can fill out so you have some adversaries to encounter - I had a few different kinds of spiders lined up, and we had a couple of cool encounters, including a combat with three giant spiders that she was lucky to escape with only some minor venom damage.
I think this worked really well, and I encourage you to try something similar in your games if you're struggling for inspiration. I will definitely use this system again. The great thing about it is that even if I paired the same two cards again, they could be interpreted differently. In this instance "infested" was with spiders, but a site infested with rats or goblins would have a very different feeling.
One tweak I might try next time is the GM banking skulls in the same way the players bank successes. Certain denizens might be brought into play for a certain number of skulls - this way you can bring the big boss baddies into play, but only once the players have explored sufficiently to have accumulated a few skulls. That would be an in-built pacing mechanism.
Delve also has some tables ('oracles') where you can roll for inspiration - I will try and remember to do that next time, to keep my descriptions fresh.
It is essentially a dynamic adventure site generation system - you pair a theme card (eg. "haunted" or "Infested") with a domain card (eg "tangle wood" or "Ice reach"). Together the cards create two random tables, one for features and another for dangers (denizens, or environmental hazards). This uses percentile dice. The Ironsworn RPG itself is more narrative and rules-lite than Forbidden Lands, but I though that I'd try using Delve to generate adventure locations on the fly without the need for huge amounts of preparation beforehand.
Here was the scenario - the player (solo) was entering a forest and I decided she was going to encounter a nest of giant spiders. I picked up the "infested" theme and the "tangle wood" domain. I decided play would progress as follows:
* in order to 'escape' the area, the player would need to roll a number of base 'progress' dice and score at least one success.
* to earn these dice, she would need to explore: every success rolled on the explore roll earned progress, and progress earned dice. Every skull rolled meant she had to face danger, and a roll on the 'dangers' section of the delve cards.
* a fail on the escape roll would lose you a dice - so you couldn't just keep trying again and again with the same roll. You would need to explore again to find the way out.
* I allowed pushing for all rolls - skulls meant a roll on the dangers table (though I allowed the player to take attribute damage instead if they wanted).
* an explore roll was a Survival roll, but in retrospect I think I'd allow any other reasonable skill roll such as Stealth or Scouting.
The relationship between the number of successes and the number of 'escape' dice these eared is vital! I chose 1 escape dice for every 2 successes on the explore roll. This had the feeling of a small-ish site - I think the player explored about 4 or 5 areas before banking 8 successes and rolling 4 dice to escape (she has pretty high survival skills). You can control the length (size) of the adventure by changing this ratio.
At one point I rolled a 99, which meant a transition to a new theme. I rolled randomly for this, and cam up with 'fortified' which I interpreted as a weird overgrown area of the forest where the trees were as densely packed as a stockade fence. Here was the lair of the mother spider.
Delve has a denizens matrix that you can fill out so you have some adversaries to encounter - I had a few different kinds of spiders lined up, and we had a couple of cool encounters, including a combat with three giant spiders that she was lucky to escape with only some minor venom damage.
I think this worked really well, and I encourage you to try something similar in your games if you're struggling for inspiration. I will definitely use this system again. The great thing about it is that even if I paired the same two cards again, they could be interpreted differently. In this instance "infested" was with spiders, but a site infested with rats or goblins would have a very different feeling.
One tweak I might try next time is the GM banking skulls in the same way the players bank successes. Certain denizens might be brought into play for a certain number of skulls - this way you can bring the big boss baddies into play, but only once the players have explored sufficiently to have accumulated a few skulls. That would be an in-built pacing mechanism.
Delve also has some tables ('oracles') where you can roll for inspiration - I will try and remember to do that next time, to keep my descriptions fresh.