캠페인 시작하기

An Ironsworn campaign is a series of connected game sessions. You will explore your world and the life of your character as you swear vows and struggle to see them fulfilled. You will journey across the Ironlands, run afoul of troubles, fight fearsome foes, and form bonds with people and communities. Through it all, you make decisions as your character and explore what it means to be Ironsworn in a harsh land.

To get started on your campaign, follow the steps described in this section.

Refer to the character creation summary on page 47. Envision your character, considering their motivations, skills, background, appearance, personality, and connections to the world. Set your stats and pick your assets in whatever order you prefer. Give your character a name.

If you are playing co-op or guided, talk over your character with the other players and establish your connections to each other. You can shorthand your ideas for now, and flesh them out in play.

Feel free to intermix world creation and character creation. The choices you make about your setting may determine the options available to your character. Is magic unknown in this world? If so, you may want to ignore the ritual assets.

If you are playing in the Ironlands or a similar setting, work through the ‘Your Truths’ exercise starting on page 122. Review the options and make selections. Keep an eye out for quest starters which trigger an idea for a background vow (page 195) or an inciting incident (page 196).

Next, choose where your story begins. Have a look at the regions on page 112. Where are your characters located? Are they part of a community, or wandering the wilderness? Talk it out with other players and envision the setting. Mark the location on your map.

If you are using your own setting or one drawn from another source (such as an RPG, book, or film), you can leverage the information on that setting to determine your character’s situation and the troubles you may encounter.

If you are playing a co-op or guided campaign, you should work through the initial process of worldbuilding with the other players. Depending on your preferences, you can spend a few minutes quickly roughing out the basics of your setting, or you can dive deep for an hour or two of collaborative creation. Talk it over with the other players to ensure you have the same expectations for your initial session. Even if you give this initial activity some focus, leave open questions and blank spaces to fill in through play.

If you are the GM, you should facilitate discussion and contribute to the worldbuilding. Take cues from the players and make suggestions to help formulate potential quests and adversaries.

Give yourself up to three bonds (page 36). These bonds may be to a community or an individual. You do not need to make the Forge a Bond move for these starting bonds. Mark a tick for each bond on your character sheet (1 tick per bond), and make note of them.

If you are playing guided or co-op, you can use these starting bonds as your connection to other player characters. Otherwise, you may establish bonds with those characters though play.

If you’d rather jump right into play, you can flesh out the details of your background bonds later. Consider these bonds held in reserve until you decide to bring them into your narrative. If you later introduce a background bond for a character or community, mark the bond. Then, envision how this bond was previously established and how this relationship impacts your story.

When you create your character, you give yourself a background vow to represent a primary motivation or ultimate goal. This vow is part of your character’s backstory. It may be a vow sworn years ago, or one which is a reaction to some recent, major event.

Write down this vow and give it a rank of extreme or epic. You don’t need to make the Swear an Iron Vow move for this quest.

Fulfilling this vow will not be easy. In story-time, it might require months, years, or even decades to see this vow fulfilled or forsaken. You may even decide your background vow isn’t something you make significant progress on in your narrative. Instead, it just helps establish some roleplaying detail for your character and fleshes out your world.

An inciting incident is the problem which arrives at the beginning of a story, propelling the protagonist into action. Everything up to that point is backstory—the normal world to which your character has become accustomed. In Ironsworn, the inciting incident is the tipping point which forces you to undertake a life of perilous quests and adventure.

To start your character’s story, envision an imminent threat or compelling need. You can use a quest starter from this book (see chapters 4 and 5), talk it out at the table, or Ask the Oracle (page 107). This problem dictates what drives your first session and sets your character’s story in motion.

What makes a good inciting incident?

• Make it personal. Why is this important to your character? Envision how this connects to your background and motivations. Also, consider how you can leverage story themes which are interesting to you as the player.

• Make it a problem that won’t go away on its own. The threats or forces at the heart of this situation will see it through, even if you ignore them.

• Give it a ticking clock. The problem won’t wait for you. If you don’t act or encounter delays, things will get worse.

• Make it universal. If you are playing with allies, make this a shared vow— important to each of you. This creates an opportunity to work together. If you are playing solo, make it a threat which impacts other people you care about.

• Up the stakes. Envision complications which make your inciting incident even more dire for you, your family, or your community.

• Limit the scope. Unlike your background vow, this is a problem which you can (and must!) deal with now. In gameplay turns, you Swear an Iron Vow and mark it as a troublesome, dangerous, or formidable quest. If all goes well, it might be resolved in a session or two. If you don’t act, things will get worse.

These suggestions can apply to any vow, but are especially relevant for an inciting incident. Even if the details are not clear to you, envision how the problem can lend itself to a rich narrative full of drama, conflict, and surprises.

Envision a prologue involving your character which helps to flesh out who you are and how you interact with your world. If you have allies, this is an opportunity to roleplay your relationships and introduce your personality and backgrounds. Your inciting incident can then serve as an event or threat which you encounter in play during your first session.

In media res is a Latin term meaning “in the middle of things.” You start your story at a crucial point. Your inciting incident is happening now, or is something you are fully aware of and must react to. The raiders are attacking. The usurper claims the iron circlet. The marauding beast appears.

You can begin with a tense, action-oriented scene as you encounter the problem. Or, you might frame a scene where you Swear an Iron Vow, letting the result of that move trigger what happens next.

To set your quest in motion, as a response to the inciting incident, make this move (page 98). But first, start with the fiction. Envision the scene. Describe what you say and how you perform the ceremony. This is an important moment for your character.

What was the result of your move?

• Did you score a strong hit? Envision your first steps. Do you Undertake a Journey? Do you Compel someone into action? Play to see what happens next, and make moves as appropriate.
• Did you score a weak hit? Your next steps are unclear. This may typically lead to new scenes and new moves. Perhaps you Gather Information (page 62) as you try to identify a path forward.
• Did you score a miss? An unexpected danger or obstacle stands in your way. Envision what it is, or Ask the Oracle (page 107). Then, play to see what happens as you attempt to overcome this stumbling block.

For an inciting incident, give your new vow a rank of troublesome, dangerous, or formidable.

Depending on the result of your Swear an Iron Vow move, your character may have a clear path forward, may have more questions than answers, or may need to overcome an immediate obstacle or threat before they can undertake their quest. You, as the player or GM, interpret what this result means. Not sure where to begin? Ask the Oracle.