The First City: An Ironsworn Actual Play
Introducing the campaign and an extra challenge
The First City is a solo playthrough of the fantasy tabletop RPG Ironsworn.
If you want to jump right into the campaign, here are some good starting points:
Session 0, Part 1 - Campaign setup (truths)
Session 0, Part 2 - Campaign setup (character creation)
Session 1 - The story begins
If you’re already familiar with The First City, here are some key links:
All Posts - Every entry in the series so far
Reference Guide - An in-depth guide to the story, settings, and characters
What Is Ironsworn?
Ironsworn is a low fantasy tabletop roleplaying game designed by Shawn Tomkin. In contrast to many other popular TTRPGs, it’s optimized for solo and small group play.
The game is set in the Ironlands, a harsh continent where life is a constant struggle to survive. As a player, your objectives are to ensure your character’s survival, fulfill their goals called “iron vows,” and tell a memorable story along the way.
A digital version of the Ironsworn rulebook is available for free download on the Tomkin Press website, and I recommend that you give it a read. Throughout this actual play, I’ll explain rules and mechanics as they become relevant, but the rulebook is your best resource for learning how to play the game.
An Extra Challenge
To add a bit more difficulty to the game, we’re going to take on an extra challenge.
Throughout the Ironsworn rulebook, there are prompts called “Quest Starters,” which are intended to help the player come up with creative story ideas for their campaign. For this challenge, we’re going to try to utilize in our campaign every Quest Starter associated with our truths and starting region—that’s 12 prompts in total.
We’re not required to adhere to the exact text of the prompts, but each of them must inspire some significant part of our story.
To be clear: using Quest Starters is not required when playing Ironsworn, and newcomers to Ironsworn shouldn’t look at this as a mandatory way to approach the game. In solo RPGs, it’s up to you to decide how you want to play, and this just happens to be the way that I find the most fun.
For me, this challenge represents a compelling narrative puzzle wherein we need to weave together a bunch of disparate threads into one coherent story. I hope you’ll join me and see what kind of epic adventure we can come up with together!
Coming Up Next
With all that said, we’re ready to start session 0 of our Ironsworn campaign!