Iron Sky: The Roleplaying Game

Narrativist vs. simulationist
about 4 years ago – Sun, Mar 01, 2020 at 07:18:44 PM

So, why so much effort in the Character's backgrounds?

If you go to www.ironskytherpg.com, you'll find all of our Pregenerated Characters have very extensive backgrounds. We put a lot of effort in those because to us, they are key to driving the game. Obviously, if you don't like to create long backgrounds for your Characters, you don't have to, but in Iron Sky: The RPG, your Character's lifeline is key. Character Points are accumulated every year of his or her life and are spent both in explicit learning (like formal education) and in 'free time' and pastimes. Our system allows you to go through every year and spend them on whatever he or she is doing, which has the interesting effect of making sure some points are spent on things you'll definitely learn at school, but you're also able to pool them and spend them all at once, as long as you don't forget to put points in things (s)he should definitely have learned. Old age Character Points are balanced by loss of Attributes AND loss of Skill Shifts if Skills are dropped or partially forgotten over the years, so a 50-year old Character won't end up with double of the Character Points a 25-year old has. 

What you DO have to keep track of, are the Life Events you accumulate in each Life Stage. Those are key to acquiring Advantages and Disadvantages. Disadvantages allow you to acquire more Character Points, but they always have to be linked to Life Events, even though some of them might be inborn. Because we're using a universal system with building blocks, you aren't limited to Advantages and Disadvantages we present in the rulebook (even though we do list a lot of examples): you can easily create your own - which is a major reason why we chose to go with a universal system.

If you play Advanced, your Broad Skills will always be divided up in Focuses and Specialisations, so you'll easily see what your Character can actually do. If you play Basic, gameplay is a little more narrativist and you probably should make sure to write down enough of a background, as that'll determine what you can do with your Broad Skills. For example, Life Sciences is divided up in Biology, Biotechnology, Health & Medicine, Machinery, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Robotics, Textiles and Tools & Hardware (we actually use research on neurological structures and AI to make these divisions). Physics is divided up in Acoustics, Cosmology, Electricity & Magnetism, Motion Physics, Nuclear Physics, Optical Technology, Quantum Physics and Thermodynamics. Even in Advanced, you will only be using the last division if you're going to specialise, but in Basic, you'll only use the Skill 'Life Sciences'. However, one thing that always bugged me about many narrativist systems that the Skills are too broad and it just doesnt make sense for anyone to know all of those subdivisions equally well. 

That's where your background and Life Events come in. If it's clear your Character is a physicist, in Basic, the GM will rule your Skill is mainly geared towards that field of science, but he won't let you use your full Shift when you're trying to figure out how textiles are composed without doing some physics-based research first. It allows for a little more freedom, but it has the disadvantage of being less clear-cut than Advanced is and you'll get to play the game according to your preferences!

All Pregenerated Characters Online
about 4 years ago – Sun, Mar 01, 2020 at 01:02:04 AM

Hi everyone,

We would have loved to introduce the statted Pregenerated Characters during yesterday's live session, but since either the backers who preregistered weren't able to join us or they didn't see our reply with the link to our Discord channel in it, we've made sure everyone has acces to the pregens now. We're still suffering from one issue (the lowest button can't be seen in browsers), so we'll add another download tomorrow, which should make the last pregen visible to everyone as well.

We won't divulge full rules here, of course, but we'll continue to offer you bits and pieces while we're getting the Quick Start ready. We'll also post print-friendly versions of the Pregenerated Characters over the upcoming week, followed by Advanced versions. 

We'll also update Lucia's background during the week, as we changed her from a blonde to a curly black-haired woman in the statted version. 

New Live Discord Sessions
about 4 years ago – Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 07:38:13 PM

Hi everyone

We're on Discord, but unfortunately no-one is showing up, so let's try to get you all involved.

We wanted to host a live session today. Ultimately, 6 people applied and we sent all of them a link to our Discord server in our replies on Kickstarter, but since stuff can always come up, we totally understand you didn't make it. 

Let's get you all a few more dates and get as many of you involved as possible! We have lots of news to share, rules to run by you and Characters to discuss. We do really want to show you what we have in place, so please do get actively involved so you can follow our progress. Because we didn't get to share the pregenerated Characters on Discord, we'll make them available this night. Our website issues have been solved, so you'll be able to download all of them. 

We're 'Iron Sky - The RPG' on Discord and the link is: https://discord.gg/SJAG78. 

So let's announce a few more dates, but please preregister for the actual live gaming since we will only take 4 players at a time and some of our co-writers will be joining in as well. You don't have to preregister for the Character and rules discussions, though.

CHARACTER & RULES OVERVIEW: SUNDAY, THE 8TH OF MARCH, 2020, AT 8 PM CET 

On this day, we'll go over each and every pregenerated Character, explain how their Basic versions and Advanced versions go together, show you how their Advantages and Disadvantages are run you past many of our rules, including the most important one: how the Shift table is used and how Skills work. We'll discuss how you can easily simplify even the Basic game if you don't like rolling 3 d10's or using or looking up 3-digit numbers - all without altering the game rules. The Synthesis game engine was designed to be universal and to allow gamers and game masters to decide on a level of complexity they feel comfortable with, but without adding optional rules, exceptions and more.

An example? Well, let's say you want to stick to d100 instead of d1000 and you need to roll 841 or lower to succeed.  In our alternative d100 table, that's 84+, which means you only roll a third die if you get exactly 84 on your d100. It's as easy as that.

We'll also discuss why we're using a standard-normal graph, why Attributes and Skills range from -9 to +9 (with -10 and +10 as outliers), how easy it gets once you wrap your mind around it and more. Basically, all of the things we would have loved to discuss today will be subjects we'll be discussing.

FIRST LIVE GAMING SESSION: SUNDAY, THE 22ND OF MARCH, 2020, AT 8 PM CET 

The number of live gaming sessions we can do is wholly dependent on the number of participating gamers, so please preregister. If you join us for the Character session, we'll add dates and divide you up in groups if there's more than 4 of you. We'll have the new version of the Quick Start ready the week after this session and almost all of the material covered in the Quick Start will be covered in the live session - except for the adventure, as we will be hosting another adventure.

Again, the link is: https://discord.gg/SJAG78. This is a permanent link, so please already knock on our door and we'll gladly add you to our roster. 

We know we took a very long time to get here, mostly due to factors entirely beyond our control, but we really are eager to show you the project is advancing, the writing is going well and we're churning out more and more stuff, but it'd be great if you get more involved. Also, don't forget my own contact details are out there and I'm always willing to chat through Whatsapp (+32 494 38 27 44) or Facebook Messenger (Dirk Vandereyken, it's the profile with my girlfriend, my little girl and myself on it) just let me know when you would like to talk. If no-one joins us on Discord, we can't host a session for you, so we hope to walk as many of you as possible through this great setting Iron Sky Oy has developed, as well as show you how smooth the game system runs. 

Greetz,

Dirk Vandereyken

'Iron Sky' update
about 4 years ago – Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 10:39:26 PM

Hi

I talked to Tero today and we're free to proceed. Contrary to some rumors out there, Iron Sky is not bankrupt, but the film team will be updating its fans within a few weeks or at least sometime next month. However, we're free to send more stuff to get green-lit, so we should be able to get feedback on the Quick Start next month.  The team sent me through new mail addresses we can use, as our messages didn't get through to Timo, who has a new address.

We've set up our Discord account and the planned live session on the 28th of Friday is still on. We've decided to break down the live sessions in 2 parts: in the first, we'll analyse the Character Sheets, talk about the pregenerated Characters and go over many of the rules. That way, everyone who's asked to join us will be able to do so. On the same day, we'll plan a full live session or even multiple live roleplaying game sessions with everyone online, so a lot more people will be able to join in. We'll post the dates right after the session on Friday, so you'll be able to join us for the live tabletop roleplaying even if you haven't followed the Discord session. We're ready to go, so we will be hosting all of the live RPG sessions in March, as we definitely don't want to keep you waiting any longer.

Greetz,

Dirk

Invisible tabs
about 4 years ago – Tue, Feb 04, 2020 at 05:29:07 AM

Hi everyone,

It seems like the bottom tab of the pregen list has disappeared on our site, so here's the 'Smiley Dave' Character Sheet to keep you warm while our webmaster gets it sorted out as soon.