Some thoughts on how to use Oracle rolls in Ironsworn to drive the story
Originally shared by Justin Gordon
Some thoughts on how to use Oracle rolls in Ironsworn to drive the story
Some thoughts on how to use Oracle rolls in Ironsworn to drive the story
Great article, Justin. You see a lot of questions in solo RPG communities about how to handle mysteries, and your article does a good job of laying out your broad options (authorial perspective vs. character perspective).
ReplyDeleteIn general, I've always found mysteries in RPG's (even traditional GM'd play) to be a bit problematic. It's not a book or a movie with a protagonist who dutifully follows the plot. Instead, it becomes dependent on the players either "solving the riddle", or being led by explicit breadcrumbs to the solution.
And here's the dirty secret of an effective mystery scenario: lots of times, the GM is just making it up. Oh, they might start out with a plan, but the players will make their own assumptions and their resolution is as good or better than anything you had planned--so you just go with it. You give them narrative control without them knowing.
And, for GM-less play, it's really not that different. Your narrative control is just out in the open, rather than in the hands of a wizard pulling levers behind the curtain. When you Gather Information, there's no "you find nothing". It's either a clue that moves you forward, or one that adds new complications.
One other addition to your article is that progress tracks will help guide that "early or late" decision. A troublesome quest will reveal more up-front, while a higher ranked quest will force you to follow a few oracle breadcrumbs first.
Loving the blog. Keep it up!
Thanks Shawn! As far as I go, I found that when I stopped "being" the protagonist and started watching my adventures as though I were an outside observer (letting myself in on some off-screen happenings ahead of time) that it really tightened up my gameplay and helped to keep my stories focused. I definitely agree that the weight of the Vow has a lot to do with how much you should know about it when you start out and how much player knowledge you should have that your character doesn't. That's just one of the many neat features that makes Ironsworn run so well GMless!
ReplyDeleteI have a strong personal preference for character perspective. I must say that I have often bogged things up with too many oracle-driven contradictions that keep piling up until the situation is a total mess. Maybe I am getting better at this, with time :)
ReplyDeleteI find that Ironsworn also helps by providing a lot of flexible but relevant context: vows really help keeping things focused. Also, the moves are designed in such a way that you can often come up with an interesting outcome without resorting to oracles.
Evandro Novel Ironsworn definitely provides a flexible system for producing cool outcomes without going to the tables. For me though, solo gaming loses a little something if I don't roll at least some of the things entirely at random (Ironsworn's twist on a pair rule drives that for me).
ReplyDeleteWhat I love most, and I don't think I really touched on it in my blog post is that you're REALLY in control of the randomness, by choosing when (or even if) to bring in a random event you stand at a crossroads between wildly different outcomes. It's really empowering, but I feel like a lot of newer players might not recognize it for the storytelling tour de force that it is
Justin Gordon I agree that rolling unexpected things by the oracle is one of the greatest pleasure of solo games. Sometimes things take unexpected turns that make perfectly sense: it really feels like you are discovering a coherent world. "Matches" are great in this respect. Since my sessions typically only involve 3 or 4 moves (and a skirmish fight played "outside" IS) I only get a match once in about three sessions: that's clearly manageable. I love the setting oracles and use them a lot, but those are different from story-twists.
ReplyDeleteJustin Gordon PS: BTW, I am using your Chartopia implementation. Thank you for sharing it!
ReplyDeleteEvandro Novel Glad it's useful to you! I've got some other chart combos (like the settlement generator) in my head, but I haven't decided on implementation yet
ReplyDeleteEvandro Novel the only problem I've had is when the dice seem convinced that you need a match every other roll! I played with a group in a 2-3 hour session and we had to have rolled 5 matches in that time, it got challenging :D
ReplyDeleteJustin Gordon .. you actually have an additional dial for that which I neglected to add to the book.
ReplyDeleteMore players will tend to add more rolls to your session, thus more matches, which can be challenging to interpret.
If you want to reduce the frequency of matches, use the even rule: resolve the impact of a match only when your challenge dice come up as an even number (2,4,6,8,10). This gives you a 5% chance of a match on any particular action roll, versus 10%.
Aside from that, remember that matches can be treated fast-and-loose. If I match on a miss, I'll often use that as a prompt to roll on the Pay the Price table.