What are Jared’s weaknesses? Epic fantasy, check. Space opera, check. Pirates and swashbuckling? Absolutely.

Considering all the above, it may not be a surprise that the product we’re looking at today, Sundered Isles, is a high-seas swashbuckling supplement for Ironsworn: Starforged, which itself was an updated version of the fantasy RPG Ironsworn. Ironsworn must be evolving entirely based on my taste in adventure genres. Allow me this brief moment of pretending the world revolves around me.

Sundered Isles is not a stand-alone game and requires Ironsworn: Starforged for its core rules. It does provide additional character resources, new moves for resolving circumstances unique to the setting and genre, and a host of new oracles.

Disclaimer

I received my copy of Sundered Isles from backing the crowdfunding campaign for Ironsworn: Starforged. I have not had the opportunity to run or play Sundered Isles, but I have played a lot of the solo rules for both Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged.

Credits

Sundered Isles Writing And Design Shawn Tomkin
Additional Writing, Proofing, And Editing Matt Click
Lead Artist Joshua Meehan
Cover Art Bryant Grizzle, Joshua Meehan
Interior Art Bryant Grizzle, Joshua Meehan, Nello Fontani, Phill Simpson, Reza Bagheri, Shawn Tomkin, Vyacheslav Milinchuk, Yifei Li
Icon Design Nathen Græy
Cultural Consultant Liam Stevens
Safety Tool Development And Consultation (FOR STARFORGED) Kienna Shaw, Lauren Bryant-Monk
Consultant For Disability Sensitivity (FOR STARFORGED) Mark Thompson
Digital Tools Ayethin, Nick Boughton, rsek
Illustrated Character Sheet Design Galen Pejeau

Our Booty

The digital version of Sundered Isles includes the following:

  • Character Sheet
  • Playkit
    • Moves Reference
    • Navigation Chart
    • Connections & Specialist Page
    • Combat Challenge Page
    • Treasure ledger
    • Character Sheet
  • Asset Sheets
    • 8 pages of asset cards, 9 to a page
  • Asset Sheets (Singles)
    • 63 pages, one asset card per page
  • Guide Book
    • 132 pages (facing pages printed as single pages)
  • Guide Book (Spreads)
    • 261 pages (each page separate)

The Guide Book PDF is in color, with multiple images of ships at sea, swashbucklers, and weathered maps. The pages with assets and moves are color-coded to help delineate what phase of the game is related to the section at hand.

Navigating the Book

The book is divided into the following distinct sections:

  • Adventures Among the Isles
  • Getting Underway
  • Oracles
  • Moves Reference

The first section of the book is dedicated to converting concepts imported from Starforged into ships at sea, as well as introducing some rules modifications when performing similar functions. The second section presents the base assumptions of the game, in a modular format that allows for different elements to be added or subtracted. It also covers the creation and managing of factions, setting tone, and establishing content to include or exclude. The last two sections are some of the most extensive parts of the book.

The Oracles section includes the tables that are the heart of the solo game and games without a GM. There are Oracles to help determine what’s going on, how plots develop, as well as the fine details. The oracles are divided into the following tables:

  • Core Oracles
  • Seafaring Oracles
  • Weather Oracles
  • Ship Oracles
  • Island Oracles
  • Overland Oracles
  • Settlement Oracles
  • Faction Oracles
  • Character Oracles
  • Shipwreck Oracles
  • Cave Oracles
  • Ruin Oracles
  • Treasure Oracles
  • Miscellaneous Oracles

The Moves Reference section collects the mechanical meat of the game in one place. While each type of move isn’t used in every game, the moves are grouped in a manner to make it obvious where to look. The Moves are grouped in the following sections:

  • Session Moves
  • Adventure Moves
  • Quest Moves
  • Connection Moves
  • Exploration Moves
  • Combat Moves
  • Suffer Moves
  • Recover Moves
  • Threshold Moves
  • Legacy Moves
  • Fate Moves

As an example, if you are exploring the isles and mapping new trade routes, you may be using rules in the Exploration Moves section. If you get into a duel with another pirate captain, you will be using the moves in the Combat Moves section. In both cases, if you fail and the move indicates that you have a consequence for failure, you will find the different moves showing consequences for exploration and combat under the Suffer Moves.

A pirate crew, including a duelist wearing a tricorn hat, a rogue, and man in a wig conjuring magical fire, and a tall steam powered construct.Quick Overview

While this product doesn’t present the core rules, for those that are curious, let’s examine how you determine what happens in Ironforged-derived games.

Characters have five stats. The stat you use to resolve a roll is detailed in the move description. Characters have multiple tracks to manage, which include Momentum, Health, Spirit, and Supply. As characters are injured, demoralized, or use up their resources, their Health, Spirit, or Supply goes down. There are specific moves you can attempt to recover each of these resources.

Whenever a character attempts to do something, if it matches one of the moves in the game, you reference the rules for that move. Resolution involves rolling a d6 and two d10s (not percentile). If your d6 + the relevant ability is greater than one of the two d10s, you get a weak hit. If it is better than both d10s, you get a strong hit. The d6 is the Action Die, and the d10s are the Challenge Dice.

If you are familiar with Apocalypse World-derived games, the move structure should sound familiar. The moves are arranged with results for total success, partial success, or failure.

Momentum is a resource you can burn, which lets you swap your Momentum score for your Action score. You can have negative Momentum, and in that case, when the integer equals your action die score, it is negated.

While there are many moves that are resolved immediately with a single roll, anything that is meant to represent a significant challenge involves creating a progress track. Your success on some moves allows you to mark a number of boxes. In some cases, you can attempt to complete the task before reaching the end of the track, but the more boxes you fill in, the more reasonable the difficulty of the move to resolve the action measured by the track.

Progress tracks are different lengths based on the amount of effort required to resolve them. The challenge ranks are:

  • Troublesome
  • Dangerous
  • Formidable
  • Extreme
  • Epic

Dueling a skilled opponent may require a dangerous progress track. Sailing from port to port trying to track down the location of a fugitive could be a formidable task. While a task like a duel with a hostile opponent will be something you work on until it’s resolved, a task like hunting down a fugitive would see you roll each time you put into a port, in between resolving other actions and engaging other action tracks.

Characters have Assets, which are discreet rules that introduce different moves related to that Asset, or that modify the rolls you make for existing moves. There are several categories of Assets:

  • Vehicle–details of vehicles you possess
  • Module–new parts you can add to modify your vehicle
  • Path–your core talents that represent your profession or archetype
  • Companion–NPCs that accompany the player character
  • Deed–new abilities you gain for performing specific momentous events

Sundered Isles assumes that you are using some of the assets from Ironsworn: Starforged. While some Assets, like Engine Upgrade, may not make sense, others, like Heavy Cannons, function the same whether you’re firing cannonballs or energized plasma.

A multi-masted sailing ship sailing away from an island, with seagulls and a small dragonet flying above the ship.Setting Assumptions

If you are familiar with Ironsworn or Ironsworn: Starforged, you may be used to the format in which the setting is presented. The setting assumptions are more about facilitating play by determining the active tropes. Some tropes are more important than others, and the game assumes some specific truths about your character. There are several places where the game asks questions and presents some possible answers.

Player characters are assumed to be privateers. There is a starting ship, and if you aren’t playing solo, all of the PCs operate off the same ship. You may or may not start to acquire other ships under your command, creating your own fleet. There are assumed to be multiple factions, including an expansionist empire of some kind. While the game assumes diverse cultures living on various islands, the tyrannical empire hasn’t colonized the region and exists as a threat to fight against.

While those are the thematic elements that are assumed, there are a few specifics, but those specifics can exist in different contexts. There are two moons, Cinder and Wraith. The interplay between the moons causes the tides to be less predictable, allowing for more variability that can come from various moves. The islands are assumed to be spread out into three broad regions, the Myriads, the Margins, and the Reaches. The different regions can facilitate different aspects of play, from piracy, exploring ruins and locations, charting new routes, and finding new islands.

One of the biggest decisions is what Realm you are adventuring in. The options provided are the Seafaring Realm, the Skyfaring Realm, and the Starfaring Realm. The Seafaring Realm resembles a setting not unlike the Age of Sail adventure stories featuring pirates and privateers in our world. The Skyfaring Realm still assumes that your players are heroic pirates, but they fly skyships between floating cities that rose to the sky when the surface of the world suffered some great calamity. The Starfaring Realm assumes that islands are floating in the void of space, and that you can use a magical version of a sailing ship to travel between islands and asteroids, a wee bit like Spelljammer.

There are a ton of tables for fleshing out different aspects of the setting. They include the following tables:

  • The Sundering–how the setting came to be how it is now
  • Relics–what remains from before
  • Modern Era–what does technology look like
  • Iron Vows–what does it look like to swear a vow to complete a quest in this setting
  • Navigation–how do people navigate and what are their unique challenges
  • Empires–how powerful and active are the imperial powers you fight against
  • Piracy–how do pirates behave, and are there wider trends
  • Religion–how do people interact with the divine or the supernatural
  • Magic–how magical is the setting
  • Beasts–noteworthy creatures that are special, but not legendary
  • Horror–terrifying legendary elements of dread

In addition to these setting details, there are also tables for origin stories both for your character and your ship, potential curses you may be dealing with, random islands you may find, the details of different beasts the PCs can encounter while exploring, and what the various active factions are. The factions are organized into the following categories:

  • Societies–shared traditions and/or ways of life
  • Organizations–groups working toward a common goal
  • Empires–what the villains of the setting look like
  • The Cursed–people bound together by supernatural misfortune

Compared to Starforged, Sundered Isles introduces new resolution frameworks to reinforce the themes and tropes of seafaring and swashbuckling. This includes a multi-step process for naval combat that involves closing on ships, engaging, and boarding. There are procedures for tracking your wealth, repairing your ship, and exploring caves and ruins. As with other elements in the various Ironsworn games, none of these additional procedures are mandated, and there are single roll resolutions for most of the scenarios that have more detailed procedures. You may use individual moves to close in on and loot a standard merchant ship but decide to use the full procedure for naval combat when encountering the imperial dreadnought that serves as the flagship of one of the oppressive nations pushing into the region.

The game has a few assumptions about who you are and how you operate, and some of these assumptions are reflected in how the moves work. You are assumed to be heroic pirates. You may not be angels, but you aren’t bloodthirsty killers. You are assumed to be in opposition to the expansionist powers in the region, which helps to present you with some guilt-free targets for your piracy. When you explore ruins, you are not looting the ruins. The moves are focused around finding out who lived here, and what happened to them. Instead of looting, you may end up finding the descendants of that culture to share your findings.

The wealth rules are simple, tracking a wealth level from 1 through 5, and providing situations where you lower your wealth level to perform tasks like doing regular upkeep or repairing damage to your ship, and increasing when you loot a target vessel. This wasn’t the first time I was reflecting on my 7th Sea 2nd edition games while reading these rules, and I appreciate that there is just enough to the wealth rules to make them meaningful, and to remain logical in their abstraction. You can make wealth rules too minimalist, where the questions about the lack of rules cause more problems than a more detailed system causes.

Two adventurers in a rowboat are floating between two rocky cliffs. In front of them, rising out of the water, is an enormous crab, larger than a sailing ship.The Oracles

You can engage with the rules for quite a while without consulting the oracles in the game, if you know exactly what you want to do, and what you want to include. Sometimes, even in solo play, you have some ideas of what you want to accomplish to establish your character in the setting. However, the Ironsworn games have a reputation for their oracles. These are the keys to being able to either play solo, or to play without a GM. While the PCs still need to have a broad idea of what they want to do, they can still be surprised by rolling on the oracles to learn the nature of their challenges and the evolving story of the world outside of their immediate quests.

The Core Oracles can be used to give you momentum. These include what kind of action the PCs need to take, what the theme of the current adventure should be, what kind of descriptors you should add to more mundane elements, and what the focus of the adventure should be.

Sundered Isles includes a new wrinkle, the Cursed Die. If you want to introduce more sinister elements to your game, but you still want them to come into the narrative at surprising times, you add a d10 Cursed Die to your d100 rolls. If the Cursed Die comes up a 10, instead of rolling on the regular oracle tables, you instead use the more sinister results on the Cursed Oracle tables. For example, while the standard weather results may include things like stifling heat or raging storms, the Cursed Weather oracle may result in blood rain, mist that displays the crew’s darkest secrets, or shifting clouds of pulsing arcane energy.

Something true of all the Ironsworn games is that these oracles can be used even if you aren’t currently using the Ironsworn rules. If you’re running a fantasy game where the characters are sailing dangerous waters, or even if you’re playing a semi-historical game set in the Age of Sail, if you want a mass of adventure seeds and random thoughts to trigger your own creativity, these oracles serve that function very well.

Wind in the Sails
 Engaging with the game shows how well it hangs together, but the Oracles are a great gateway to get eyes on the inside of the book. 

If you’re already a fan of the previous Ironsworn incarnations, this is going to provide more of what you already enjoy about the system. The Curse Die is a solid addition to the rules. It adds another dimension to the utility of the oracles, and it provides pacing for your nasty surprises when you don’t want to trust your gut instincts on how often you should be introducing nasty escalations to the narrative. The oracles are useful beyond their functionality in the game and can be used for all manner of thematically similar games.

Becalmed

This game knows what it wants to do, how to resolve things, and how to introduce more elements to the game to represent new narrative additions. While that’s not bad, at times it can be a little overwhelming. Even with the clear organization and color coding, the fact that the game has that level of organization in the first place can sometimes be off-putting to someone new to the system. Reframing the exploration of ruins as solving the mystery of the lost culture is an approach I appreciate, but while I can envision complications for adventure stories, it’s harder for me to picture emergent mysteries as satisfying.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

Ironsworn is an interesting conglomeration of gaming concepts, from adding elements of Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games to providing solo and GMless experiences. While it does those things well, from the outside, it can sound like a bit of an experimental activity. Engaging with the game shows how well it hangs together, but the Oracles are a great gateway to get eyes on the inside of the book. They are consistently full of interesting options, and those options just beg for you to roll a die and see what comes up.

If you want adventure fuel for your fantasy privateer game, or even if you may want an alternate way of telling stories in existing swashbuckling settings, you shouldn’t be disappointed with this purchase. Even if you only have your fantasy crew take to the waves intermittently, the oracles alone may make it worth the price to you.