Stuff from Entitas

Ironsworn: Designing an Asset from Concept to Mechanics

Once you understand the language of assets, it becomes easier to actually write out your asset idea. That being said, there’s no one way to do this, so this document is just my personal method on how to think through an asset. I’m going to assume you’ve read page 240 of the core Ironsworn rulebook. It likely doesn’t cover anything you don’t already know from studying the assets themselves, but it’s a good skim.

Concepts

Every asset is a concept. The concept is usually well-summarized by the name and type of asset. Concepts can range from the fantastical of “I collect magical essence for tricks and illusions” and “I am haunted by a spirit who I regularly interact with” to the mundane of “I have a dog” or “I make stuff”.

I’ll use one of the first asset concepts I ever made as an example point: a Rat companion. Not the most outrageous concept out there, but a good one. Rats are clever critters and we could have some fun with these abilities going in all sorts of directions.

Once I have my concept, I think up of what narrative situations the concept could be applicable in. If you remember how abilities work, they’re made up of a narrative context along with an effect. So, now I think about what contexts a rat might be narratively interesting in. I thought of when in the story the rat could be most interesting, or ideas for setpieces / snippets of storytelling I’d like to see happen involving the character and their rat.

Looking up stuff about rats in fiction and folklore, they’re framed as tricksters, versatile and resilient, and occasionally have associations with fertility. They’re also obviously associated with plague, death, trash-digging, theft, and other negative stuff. I thought up five or so contexts:

  1. Scavenging with your rat.
  2. Using your rat as a spy.
  3. A nod to the rat’s ability to survive.
  4. Interactions related to sneak attacks, possibly disease or illness related.
  5. While non-specific, something related to Face Death would be thematic.

In the end, I decided to discard the fourth and fifth ideas. I personally didn’t like that angle. I wanted my rat to be a happier rat.

Note that, at this point, I haven’t even thought about any game mechanics yet. I’m purely thinking about the asset as a narrative tool - when my rat would meaningfully impact the story.

Mechanics

Only after I’ve done on that, and have all the narration in mind, is when I start thinking about the mechanics: I have my concept and what sort of highlights it’d add to my play at points. Now how do I translate those into the mechanics of rolling? I take this admittedly pretty freeform. You could deeply get into the number-crunching about what sort of bonuses are more impactful than others, but I try to stick to a few principles:

  1. The more specific your context, the better the reward should be. Two case studies for this are Ironsworn’s Dancer and Wright, which are fairly specific assets in their nature but provide high bonuses. Compare Wayfinder’s first ability, which doesn’t even offer an add at all: just +1 momentum, specifically on a strong hit, for what’s likely a very common move in your game and features no narrative ties.
  2. Consider risk and reward. Ironsworn’s Empowered’s first ability lets you reroll a Sojourn! But on a miss, you’re in big, big trouble. Starforged’s Engine Upgrade lets you reroll any dice AFTER making the move, as well as treating a weak hit as a strong hit… but you always Withstand Damage (-2), and that’s before you risk scoring a Miss and paying the price on top of it.
  3. Be very, very careful if you’re writing a psuedo-move with its own rules and mechanics. In the worst case, you either create an infinite number machine, or something that’s so improbable that trying to use it is a net negative.
  4. Ironsworn assets tend to be simpler. Starforged assets tend to be more involved, and more generous with rerolling dice and presetting dice to certain values.
  5. When in doubt, add +1 and take +1 momentum on a hit. Maybe throw an extra bonus on a strong hit with a match. Hey, they don’t all have to be elaborate. Sometimes a boost is just a boost, you know?

My Rat, Made Real

For scavenging, it was simple: a bonus to the Resupply move, in the context of looking through junk, finding treasure in trash. I added an extra bonus on a strong hit for when your very clever rat finds additional value for you.

When you Resupply by searching wreckage or rubbish, add +1. On a strong hit, your rat finds value: take either +1 supply or +2 momentum.

For spying, I looked at a similar ability from the Giant Spider asset in Ironsworn: “You may Face Danger +shadow by sending your spider to secretly study someone. On a hit, the spider returns to reveal the target’s deepest fears through a reflection in its glassy eyes. Use this to Gather Information and reroll any dice.”

That seems a little excessive for my rat, though, and I definitely didn’t want to copy this verbatim. I settled on a more basic move of just giving you a bonus, and left it as an exercise to the reader for how your rat could convey the results of its spying. I changed the wording a little to highlight just using it as a sneak, too:

When you Secure an Advantage +shadow by sending your rat to sneak around or to spy on someone, add +1 and take +1 momentum on a hit.

For the last ability, I had two thoughts: I wanted the rat to have a very low amount of health (2 seemed right, comparing to the official assets). That’d make it very easy for your rat to die. I figured an ability that made it less painful to sacrifice resources for your rat would not only help with that a little, but add some fun narrative opportunities:

When your rat endures harm and you burn momentum to improve the result, envision how they escape the greater danger, and take +2 momentum.

And there we go: three abilities for a rat companion. Give it a health track that goes up to +2, and you’d have the asset I used in one of my own campaigns. Following a straightforward process:

  1. Come up with the overarching theme or concept.
  2. Come up with ideas for the narrative triggers: when would this asset be useful? Don’t even consider moves or dice yet: purely when in the story the asset would come into play and highlight your character’s exceptional nature.
  3. Using those narrative conditions, think of the mechanical impact: what moves could be involved here, if any? How rewarding, and/or risky, do you want this to be to use? Are you wanting to write your own pseudo-move with its own mechanics?
  4. Write it out.