Iron Horizon RPG Demo Now Available! (Plus Solo Sample Adventure)

Now that we finished the setting creation process and worksheet from the Expanded Player’s Guide, it’s time to start putting the material to the test! You can view the completed RPG demo (as a Google doc) here. I’d love to hear what any of you think of the material and for any feedback you have for the setting. I’m not going to put it on the Foundry quite yet, because it really isn’t ready. Once this material gets tested, then I’ll make it an official demo for the Foundry! Until then, feel free to share it with people.

I don’t have a regular group to play Genesys with, sadly, so I’ll be starting off by doing a solo play test using the Unmastered Play Guide, which can be purchased at a PWYW price here (DTRPG Affiliate link to support the Unmastered Play Guide authors and Iron Horizons’ future development). We’ll be using the Structured Play Mode.

(If you haven’t seen any Iron Horizons material yet, here’s a quick set of links: Setting Introduction, Creating a Minimum Viable Setting for Genesys, Tropes/Themes/Technologies, Building the World, Religions/Societies/Factions)

Our Protagonist

The first step for any TTRPG is to create a character. I’ve gone ahead and done that, using the material from the play test material, the UPG, RPG Sessions for dice and character management, and Hero Forge to create some images. Our main hero will be Captain Jack Quincy, whose character sheet can be seen here. His archetype is Average Human, from the Genesys Core Rulebook, and his career is Trader, which I put together using skills from the play test material. There is an official Trader career in one of the official source books (Secrets of the Crucible, I think? I don’t have it, however.)

He’s a trader, which, in game terms, primarily blends piloting with social skills. So, the Career skills (which are cheaper to improve), are Astrocartography, Cool, Discipline, Piloting, Streetwise, Ranged (Light), Negotiation, and Knowledge (Commerce), which you’ll remember as being a skill I invented for this one. I fudged the standard rules on starting money, going with 1000 starting monies rather than the default 500.

Iron Horizons is a very technologically heavy setting, so characters need a lot of gear to thrive in it. Most of the money went for the handheld computer, which cost 400 monies, followed by a portable medkit, and spacesuit. All of which seem pretty critical to an independent trader in the Diskward Marches. His armor is a utility jumpsuit and his weapon is a light pistol, both of which are pretty cheap and serviceable. The book describes the light pistol as being the equivalent of a 9mm or .38 caliber, so I went with a 1911 frame, basically in .38 caliber.

That leaves him plenty of encumbrance to carry other things, while being decently enough protected against the low-level issues we’re likely to see in the Alathni System. I gave him a worker’s hardhat in the picture, because I thought it would make sense to have that while working aboard a ship or on a space station (he’s raised on Forlorn Hope Station).

If you’ve played the Star Wars RPGs from Fantasy Flight Games/EDGE, you’ll remember the Obligation/Duty/Morality mechanics, which helped create character-driven plot. Genesys has replaced these with motivations broken into Desire, Fear, Strength, Flaw. Each character gets a minimum of one of these. For Jack, his Desire is Wealth, as he desperately wants to get away from Alathni. His fear is Poverty, because that was how he grew up. His Strength is Adaptable and his weakness is Pride. I think that should give him plenty of interesting personality dynamics.

The Plot

For the Unmastered Play Guide, the first step is to generate a Campaign Goal. This is the overarching goal for the story line, which is broken into smaller Adventure Goals. To generate a Campaign Goal, there’s a very handy table to roll on. Now, as the authors point out, unlike in a standard Genesys roll, the symbols will not cancel each other out this time around. The primary pool is a green Ability die and a purple Difficulty die. So, we pop that into good old RPG Sessions and get the following result:

For those not familiar with the Genesys dice, this result includes one Success, one Advantage, and one Failure. In a normal game roll, this would end up being a single Advantage and an overall failure. For a Campaign Goal, this instead gives us some key results: The character must become something and an entire organization stands in their way. Additionally, the one Failure includes a suggested number of steps to accomplish the campaign goal. In this case, it ends up being 14.

Now, that is a fantastic goal for a campaign. And there’s a lot of different ways we can run with that based on our worldbuilding in combination with Jack’s motivations. He wants wealth, because he’s terrified of poverty, but he’s proud and adaptable, so he won’t ask for help.

He’s a trader by career, so let’s say the goal is to become a Free Trader, someone who owns their own tramp freighter and is beholden to no one. So, for this, he definitely needs to get a ship, most like a Tramp Freighter. Referring once again to the Iron Horizons setting demo, we can see that a Tramp Freighter costs 62,000 monies and has a rarity of 4. Not rare, but not easy to acquire.

Probably something like this from www.shapewright.com. You can’t really see from this angle, but there are two loading ramps on the bottom in the middle of the ship that look like it would be easy to drive cargo aboard.

For comparison, Jack currently has… 60 monies (Technically it’s probably Aldottorai Dollars, but Genesys is abstract). So he needs to multiply his net worth by a thousand. Plus, he needs to hire a crew, buy a cargo, and then find a buyer for that cargo. And there’s an entire organization opposing him in this. He’s from Forlorn Hope Station, so let’s say it’s one of the gangs on the station. For simplicity sake, let’s call them the Jets.

They probably sell illegal substances, extort local businesses and inhabitants, and smuggle people into the system and onto the planet, bypassing the Alathni Company’s procedures to charge people to live on Alathni Major.

My guess is the Quincy family came to Forlorn Hope Station with the dream of living on Alathni Major, but were never able to afford the cost, or able to indenture themselves to the Alathni Company. So, for several generations, they ended up living on the station, trying to scrape up enough money to pay either the Jets or the Alathni Company.

In the meantime, they’ve probably also become deeply indebted to the Jets for not being able to pay. Again, Jack’s fear is Poverty, and it’s part of what makes his desire Wealth. He wants to escape the Forlorn Hope and create a new life for himself.

Yes, I know we’re basically just playing Han Solo at this point. It’s fine. Han is a classic. We can run with this. And unlike lots of people, I really enjoyed Solo. We’re kind of re-enacting that opening part of his story with this anyway, so let’s just lean into it.

That gives us a few steps on the journey:

1. Pay off the family debt to the Jets.
2. Start earning 75,000 monies to cover all the ship essentials.
3. Turn a profit.

That’s roughly a three act structure, at least one we can start working with. The UPG has its own system for working with story acts which we haven’t gotten to yet.

The Adventure

With a campaign goal in mind, we can now move to the next stage, which is the Adventure Goal. Again, we can use the provided table for this. This time, however, we’re rolling a Proficiency Die and a Challenge Die.

This gives us two Success and two Threats. That result gives us the following:

Recover something valuable and/or dangerous from a force of nature

Oh, we really are going full Solo on this, aren’t we. No coaxium fuel, I promise. Additionally, there’s a table to determine the kind of reward gained from the adventure, using a simple d10. Back to RPG Sessions for that roll and I get a 10, which gives me a result of Roll 2x. Two more rolls result with a 5 and a 2. For the 5, that means the first reward will be Assistance and the second reward will be Treasure.

So, upon completion of this goal, Jack will have someone who will help him later in his journey as well as some sort of treasure. I suspect that will be either what he recovers from a force of nature, or in the same place.

These are the fundamental elements necessary for the UPG’s pregame preparation, but it then goes into the Oracle section. The first one is the Theme Focus Deck and uses a deck of cards, with both numbers and card suits having an impact. I don’t own a deck of cards, so I went over to random.org and used their playing card shuffler, drawing the nine of clubs. The nine gives the result of Mysterious while the Clubs carries a result of Enemies, complications, and/or rivalries. This section also has a random event table, which I don’t we need at this point.

Let’s combine all of our results and see what we end up with:

Jack’s story is about how he needs to become something, but an entire organization stands in his way, and the first step of this process is to recover something valuable and/or dangerous from a force of nature, while dealing with something mysterious as well as enemies, complications, and/or rivalries. Upon success, Jack will receive Assistance and Treasure.

This will take me a bit of time to get up and running, and I’ll draw in other resources to supplement the Unmastered Play Guide. I own the newest edition of Stars Without Number, as well as several digital copies of the older supplements, which have plenty of tables and such I’ll likely use.