el Stiko
Creator of
Recent community posts
Hi! Thanks for your interest in the game, and your questions are good because they help review and refine the text.
- Spending a point in Lore allows a player to introduce a piece of knowledge to the fiction via their character, specifically something they learned (and perhaps when/where/how they learned it) which would be helpful to their current plight/quest/course of action. Wits is similar, but to introduce a sight/sound/sensation/smell which the character notices right here and now (or at least very recently in the immediate vicinity). The intention was to present something akin to Spout Lore/Discern Realities from Dungeon World, but in a token economy, not a roll for hold. Does that help? Is there any way you think that could be clearer in our text?
- Spotlight movement is very much a table culture thing which varies from group to group. One group might prefer initiative systems or clockwise order, or just jumping around based on character fiction and/or player enthusiasm, and each person's readiness to contribute. This game was working within a self-imposed word/page limit, so both this and any other table tools, including safety, were considered out of scope beyond the introductory paragraph assuming friends who share the table, and all that infers, including the assumption that it's usually fairer to dream up dangers and treasures for each other in equal measure, avoiding the inequity of people dreaming up too many treasures for themselves, and too many dangers for others.
Hope this helps in the short term, and perhaps a future release of the text will handle these specific concepts directly and/or in better detail. Have a great day, yourself!
Designer's notes: Single A4 sheet for rules, flip side for character sheet. 500 words for rules, consisting of an intro paragraph and eight distinct moves. Familiar six stats from traditional D&D and each has an associated resource which either informs capabilities, or is spent to shape outcomes, or both. Familiar d20 from D&D married to the PbtA triad of graduated outcomes, no DC to set beyond your own stats. If there's one thing I wish I had done differently, it would be to ignore word count and enchance the clarity of each move's intent, because I know what things are for but I'm not sure if anyone else reading it will actually grok how I imagine play.
Thanks! Every chance. I was waiting for Shawn to finalise his new sheet layout, has that happened? I will check the channels and see asap.
https://elstiko.itch.io/fancy-ironsworn-character-sheet/devlog
Secret Dragons
In this bare-bones role-playing game, you are dragons who have taken the form of common folk in order to explore their world & learn what it’s like to be a mere mortal in service to others.
https://elstiko.itch.io/secret-dragons
I'm sharing this one because it's the first thing I made which I thought was pretty enough and innovative enough to be worthy of posting on itch. I hope more people try it, and that some of them like it, because it was something I really enjoyed dreaming up.
I'm now working on something prettier and simpler, about solemn pilgrimages across a fantasy world.