Iron Valley
A downloadable solo roleplaying game
Welcome to the Valley! 🦝🥕
Iron Valley is a cozy solo ttrpg hack for Ironsworn and Starforged.
In this game you take the role of someone moving into a small community and starting their life anew. Maybe you’ll restore your family’s farm. Maybe you’ll explore the mysterious forest just beyond town. Maybe you’ll fall in love and get married! This is a game about living a cozy life with good company, one day at a time.
This updated release of Iron Valley runs 250 pages and features the following:
🍒 The Passage of Time! As you take actions the clock advances and days come and go, can you make the most out of each day?
🍑 Create Your Own LifeSim! By using world truths, you can create your very own version of the Valley. Will your Iron Valley be a medieval village or a small rural town hours away from the big city? Will it be populated by adorable animals or fantastical ancestries? Mix and match to your liking!
🍎 Simplified Moves! With only a handful of moves to learn, life in the Valley is pretty simple once you get the hang of it.
🍊 Make it a Promise! The central mechanic of this game revolves around making and keeping promises to your friends, yourself, and your frienemies!
🍐 Oracles for DAYS!! This rulebook has 50+ pages of cozy oracles to keep you inspired, give you ideas, and help you generate plots and characters.
Update 1.2 is Here!! 🎁🎈
The latest update to Iron Valley takes the page-count up to 250 and provides many quality of life improvements. The entire text has been cleaned up substantially, mechanics have been explained, and a few experimental changes are currently in effect. Of course, this update also includes everything added as part of the massive v1.1 update:
💖 Cultivate Relationships with Gift-giving! Earn favor with Townies by gifting them their favorite items! Every Townie is different and the more favor you have the more you get to know them. Will you unlock all the heart events for your favorite Townie?
⏩ More Moves, Still as Simple as Ever! This update includes six new moves to enrich your gameplay! Go foraging, set up a shop, trade with Townies... and even receive presents from them~
🤝 New Game Modes! Play with friends with new added game modes and optional rules to further customize your version of the Valley.
🐮 Livestock? We Got Options! Livestock is looking better than ever! Raise cows, chickens, alpacas, and even... slimes? Included in this version is a whole slew of fantastical livestock options. From the curious Pitcher Crab to the Beaver Weaver, these Iron Valley critters are ready to join your ranch.
The key inspirations for Iron Valley are life and farming simulation games such as Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons (Harvest Moon), and Stardew Valley. This game attempts to capture the feeling of working towards player-driven goals while making the most out of each day.
Iron Valley is a work in progress, so if you have any feedback or ideas as to how to improve it, don't hesitate to reach out! You can find me pretty much everywhere @MistreKirin.
Iron Valley is also available for purchase on my Ko-Fi Shop and DriveThruRPG.com!
Looking for fillable player sheets and other fun resources? Check out the game's official website for links to everything from Townie generators to automatic oracles!
This work is based on Ironsworn and Ironsworn: Starforged (found at www.ironswornrpg.com), created by Shawn Tomkin, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Iron Valley is not an official supplement for the Ironsworn or Ironsworn: Starforged RPGs.
Download
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Development log
- Iron Valley v1.2 is out!! 🤠🐮May 12, 2023
- Iron Valley v1.1 is HERE!! 🎈🎁Mar 31, 2023
Comments
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Been having a blast playing this! As someone currently jobless I appreciate the free availability of such a high quality product that's filled with so much love and effort.
Thank you so much for the kind words. I've made it my mission to keep my games (and my upcoming novels) as easy to access as possible. Although I very much appreciate people supporting me monetarily, I am happy enough knowing people are enjoying my work 😊💚
Is v1.3 in the works? I'm just asking to know if I should hold off on printing for a little bit. Lovely game! :D
1.3 wont be for a bit, since I'm currently finishing a novel + working on a smaller game! Hope this helps, thank you for checking out my game 💚
Thanks for letting me know. I'll go ahead and print my copy then. It looks amazing.
Wow, I just came here looking for this info too. I was re-reading through the book and read the section on Heart Events where it promises that a future update will include more rules around romance and thought I'd see if anything had been posted. Happy to hear it's still on your mind. I really like this Ironsworn hack, and think about it whenever I want something a little slower. It's a great product.
Hey! Love the game.
Just a small comment - it says to go to the official website to download goodies, but there's no link on this page to it. I found it in the PDF of the game, but it took me a while :-)
Sorry about that! I've fixed it now 😅
Hey, I’m currently enjoying the game and decided to make my own custom move. I felt like a direct way to dedicate time with a townie would be great. I will test it out to see how it goes. A limit to might be good for balance, but I’m unsure if it should be once a day, once per townie a day, or some kind of cooldown of 1d3 days for each townie. I don’t want to overcomplicate it, so I advise to just choose whatever works best for your current game.
Hang Out:
When you want to do something with a friend, try hanging out. Roll as if you were trying your best, imagine what the activity is and what that would require.
Strong Hit:
You have a great hangout and have time to spare! Gain 2 favor (plus any heart favor). Mark 2 ticks if this fulfills a promise.
Weak Hit:
You manage to have a good hangout, but lose track of time. Gain 1 favor (plus any heart favor). Mark a tick if this fulfills a promise. Time Passes.
Miss:
Despite both of your efforts, something happens that prevents the hang out from being fun or you lose track of time. Time Passes.
Hi! Do you have a discord for this game? I'd love to have a place to hear people's thoughts and chat about it before I pick it up.
I do! I have a discord for all my games and streams. It's a quiet, chill place. You can find the link for it here 👍
I just have a quick question about how the barter/favor economy works. How does one trade for something big, like land to build a house and a farm on? I want to work towards getting a permanent place to stay, but I have no idea where to start.
Thank you for the question!
As you noticed the favor economy is built for day-to-day trading, not things like houses or land. For this situation I recommend using a Promise. I think it makes more sense thematically (and is more fun) to help someone in town and have them give you a house (or build you one), than doing boring stuff like having your credit checked, working for 20+ years, and then trying to get a bank loan.
Here's what I would do:
Promises are very powerful mechanisms for allowing you to gain things inside the world, make changes, or growing closer to townies. I hope this helps! Please don't hesitate to ask more questions 🐸💚
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I'm really enjoying the game so far!
I created a small random table for the Root Around move that allows the player(s) to mechanically explore their town (going to shops & restaurants, visiting helpful townies, finding inspiration, etc), and I wanted to share it. I hope people find it helpful if they use it.
Thank you for sharing!! 💚
This game is an absolute gem! I'm about one season into my solo campaign, and just played a co-op game with a friend tonight. It has brought me so much joy and calm in a stressful season, and I cannot recommend it enough. It's easy to pick up, easy to teach, and so much fun to play in both co-op and solo mode. If you're a Stardew fan looking for a tabletop alternative, or just someone looking for a way to unwind and stretch the creative, playful side of your brain, I'd highly recommend picking up a copy!
As a side note, regarding printing, once I worked through a couple weeks, I haven't had any trouble running solo sessions with just the player sheets and the moves, though I'll occasionally pull up the oracles on my laptop or to reference certain holidays. I also suspect it would be easy to track promises in a dot-grid journal, which is what I plan to switch to once I've made it all the way through the journal I'm writing in currently.
Thank you for the glowing recommendation!! I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed my game 😌💚
Such a wholesome game! It feels like playing an indie. I didn't expect to find such a good game when trying to emulate the Stardew with an roleplaying game. <3
Aww thank you!! It means a lot to hear that 😌💗
the entire IV system has yet to make it to the table, but the Oracle tables are BY FAR the best low impact tables out there! They are worth every penny of the price just for them. I’m currently using them to run my Apthecaria game. Works perfectly.
Thank you for the glowing recommendation! We had a lot of fun making the tables, love seeing them used in other games 💚
I'm looking forward to a more fleshed out romance mechanic <3
Hey there! New player here. I absolutely love the vibes of the game and how simple but deep the promises systems works for this!
I do have a suggestion though regarding Make a Promise. Rather than determining the number of progress boxes based on Complexity X Urgency, I suggest determining it by Complexity X Scale instead (Or Quality X Quantity). I found the original system kind of paradoxical in that more urgent matters took more progress boxes to fulfil which meant that they took more time to complete despite being more urgent.
But that's just a suggestion. I appreciate all the hard work that went into this thing and hope y'all have a good time!
tl;dr edit: "complexity" represents how difficult the task is, while "urgency/importance" represents how much achieving the goal means to you.
One thing that I've found helps me conceptualize my promises when I'm playing is to reframe "urgency" as "importance". It's pretty much an identical concept, and unlike adding something like "scale" it doesn't overlap with the idea of complexity. A big task means it's got more things to do, which I would say means a higher complexity score. But an important task doesn't say anything about how much there is to do, just how much completing that goal is weighing on you.
This works for me for two reasons: one, literally all I need to do is change "urgent" to "important". "laid back" and "critical" still make perfect sense when you're talking about just importance instead of importance+time-sensitivity. And two, having more promise boxes to fill means you'll spend more time thinking about it or working on it, which has the emergent effect of it feeling more important. If the goal is important, you'll put more attention into completing it, right?
Hi! Love the game, got a quick question regarding Reap the Benefits and Progress Tracks.
Can you fulfill a promise and Reap the Benefits without filling all the boxes on the progress track, similar to how you could fulfill a vow early in Ironsworn? With the consequence in this case just being less rewards?
Apologies if this is covered in the book, I thought to have looked through but couldn't find an answer anywhere.
Your first instinct was correct! You can complete a promise early, earning less rewards.
Also no worries, I love answering questions. I'm just happy that people are playing my game 😊💚
Thank you!
I poured hours into Stardew Valley and some of the older Story of Season games, so I'm excited to dive into this properly.
Hey! Will there be combat mechanics later on? This is pretty much exactly what I'm looking for, but I'm itching to play something like Rune Factory or the My Time series :D
You should probably look at the rules for Ironsworn, the game this is based off of. It might take some work and hacking things together, since actual conflict seems to be against the purpose of this game, but it's the whole core of Ironsworn. I don't think you're likely to get official combat rules for Iron Valley, unfortunately.
Thank you for your question~ 🌸 I'm also a huge fan of Rune Factory so I totally get you! I do want to clarify that you can do combat in IV, it would be a Try Your Best!! roll. That being said, IV is meant to be more about personal conflict and relationship-building, so crunchy combat with armor classes and to-hit dice is kind of out of the scope at the moment.
Of course, I will never say never to adding combat because one day I might get a spark of inspiration in the middle of a walk/shower and realize how to add dungeons to this game. Same goes for adding a more in-depth farming simulation aspect. There is a lot of room for IV to grow as you can see~
I hope this answer helps, don't hesitate to ask or reach out to me 💚
It's good! I wouldn't mind at all if any hypothetical combat add on wasn't crunchy, would go against the spirit of Ironsworn and Iron Valley. Thanks for the reply ☺️
Before I even get to playing yet, I wanna say: the writing in the rulebook is a delight. You have the perfect Cozy Tone and sense of humour.
Actually, I also find the order it's written to be incredibly nice, as well. Links to other sections are perfectly placed, and I thought I needed to know what skills/stats/options/traits the town experience had before I started playing (the Truths sections) but you know what? You were right! I was already scheming in my head anyway, and I did not need to know much more than what I wanted out of this game before we got to these questions.
OK maybe I could have used a lil bit on how items worked first, but I ended up rolling on the oracles by rolling a number and then choosing the most appealing answer from any of the item lists, repeat 3 times total, and I think that's going to turn out just fine.
ALSO ALSO, unlike the robust roleplaying games (with more firm rules, especially when multiplayer-centric) I actually uh... read most of the rulebook in one night just fine without overwhelm. Not all at once mind you, but it was a really nice change from the slogs I'm used to when the books are longer~
PS:I'm using another solo game establishing a character already, and decided to magically slip them between worlds to Iron Valley when their time there is done at the built-in end of the game. That's why I'm not playing this one quite yet c:
Thank you!! I'm a fiction author so a little bit of my writing voice got in there. I'm happy to hear that the fun I had writing the book shone through! It just makes me smile that the book flows well. I have had my share of experiences trying to read a TTRPG book and it feeling like a chore. Reading a book like this in one sitting is no small feat!
Once again, thank you so much for this lovely comment! Don't hesitate to reach out or ask more questions once you are ready to step into the Valley~ 💚👩🌾🥕
This is absolutely delightful. Someone on Reddit recommended the game as his favorite "happy-place game"so I had to check it out!
I'm lately just discovering "cozy" games - found an MMO today called Palia that's got a similar vibe to this.
I know you said a printout isn't really necessary but I love the art style (It's Honest Work is my favorite little thing) and I would love to have a print copy somehow. Sadly it would be pretty costly to print in color at home, or to order in full color from Lulu or PrintMe1. If the opportunity ever presents itself for you to offer an affordable PoD through one of those services or your own means, I promise I'd buy a copy.
psst, some libraries offer affordable printing on regular printer paper like you'd use at home. It may take a few visits due to reasonable limits on it, but it could be available if that's accessible to you. Mine offers free X pages per week with my card, another one charged like a few cents USD per, what, 10 pages for colour, maybe? :3
Hi there! I love this project and the possibilities and the setting and the vibes, great work!
I need advice tho, I am very bad at playing solo, I immediatelly got stumped at the first "Time Passes" roll... so... any help in how to define what happens?
I really want to play solo but this is the the point that always stop me, being unable to define what happens next
Any help is appreciated, and again, this is a great game, great setting, I will be looking closely for any update on this project
Hi there! Thank you for the lovely comment~ 😊
Solo role-playing can be hard, so don't feel bad! I would be delighted to help you. 🌷🌼🌻
Now, one of the coolest things about solo role-playing is that you can be as detailed or as brief as you want, you are ultimately the boss and as long as you're having fun then you're doing it right. That being said, I've seen two kinds of approaches to dealing with Time Passes, some players like a macro approach while others prefer a micro one.
As you can see, there's a lot of flexibility here! Personally I use them both. I like to really think about the consequences of a big roll, but when it comes to small things I skip right past 'em. In here lies the power of solo role-playing: you have the freedom to decide how much detail you want.
I hope this comment helps! Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have more questions~
PS: Remember that if you are ever at a loss, there are a lot of oracle tables at the end of the book filled with ideas just a dice-roll away~
I am kind of a grimdark person, but this gets me interested somehow. Let’s see.
I was frustrated with the progress / vow system in Ironsworn, but it looks IDEAL for this game. This might actually be a better use of that mechanic than the original! Excited to dig deeper into this. Smart idea!
Thank you!! I hope you have fun with my game! Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions 😊
Hi there! I just did another play through video of Iron Valley, this time I try using it to play Stardew Valley and complete the bundles to fix the community center. It was a fun time and I made some good progress. Feel free to check it out here:
Thank you for sharing! 💚
This game has been a blessing for me as someone wanting more slice-of-life RPGs . I love it so much! It helps a lot with writing inspiration, too. 💛
I absolutely adore this game, it's stardew valley combined with ttrpg!
Also the fact that this is still being updated makes it into my favorite ttrpg. Also one of the first games that got me into solo ttrpgs!
Thank you so much for leaving these lovely comments! 😌💖
I love this game ♡
Glad to hear that! 💖💖💖
I've been loving this game and don't feel like it needs anything else, but there's some notes on your site and in the book about how you have more planned for the game and I'm curious if that's still the case. (Absolutely no pressure, though! If you never put out another update, it will still continue to bring me joy and delight.)
There's definitely updates in the future! Romance and marriage can still be expanded on and there is lots of room to add a "museum" system and I really wanna explore that. Aside from those, there's also a couple typos and I really want to make the book (a) more clear and (b) have play examples!
That being said, I'm working on quite a few things so I can't make a promise as to when this will come out, I recommend following me / my stream to stay up to date on what I'm working on! My current project (coming out this month) is an Ironsworn hack in the style of Monster Hunter ♥
Thank you for leaving such a lovely comment~!
Oh that's very exciting! I'll go check out your channel as well. Thank you for the reply! :D
Where can a very interested fan find more information about this Monster Hunter book? 😁
This project is currently on the back burner while I work on other games. It is something I very much want to make, but it's just a little too big for the time I have atm. Tho make sure to follow me / check out my discord for updates! 😌💚
The game looks so awesome but Is there a condensed version anywhere? I'd love to print it out but the font and format seems really big and spread out and would cost a bit to print with it being so many pages.
Hi there! Unfortunately at this moment there is no version of the book like that. You could print 2 book pages per real page, since the book was formatted for 6x9, though I'm not sure if this would work. I'm very touched that you would want to print my game.
That being said, if you wanted to print the book for reference while playing, I honestly don't think you need to do that! Once you get a handle on the rules the game pretty much plays itself. The only things I would strongly recommend printing is the move reference sheet and the oracles, since these are the two things you are guaranteed to need on a play-by-play basis! Hope that helps 👍
I'm not affiliated at all with Iron Valley, but I just want to second what the author said: almost all the references you need are on the printable reference sheets and fillable forms. I have the "game creation" worksheet and three* move sheets printed out single-sided because I don't like flipping pages, but you can easily condense those down to two pieces of paper by printing double-sided. Those plus the calendar (which I have as one double-sided sheet, because I only need to see one season at a time) cover pretty much everything!
Since my first session, I've only brought up the book while playing if I want to use one of the many roll tables (which you can use one of the handy oracle sites for instead) or I need to check details on one of the festival days.
*Edit: I just remembered, I think I might have condensed the move sheets into fewer pages by putting more of the tables on each page? So if you do it as-is, it's probably more than 3, but you can easily combine them to fewer printings.
Do you have any suggestions on how to narrate the very beginning of the story? I always have difficulty with this, and its not detailed much in the rules. Thanks in advance if you do <3.
There's two ways I like to go about it:
(A) The Long Way
Envision your character leaving the place they were in and the steps they take to get to the Valley. You don't have to do role-play or even big scenes, just go step by step the same way that I person would recall a trip. This is not my favorite way to do it, but it helps some players to have the chronological series of events. That leads to them ending up in the Valley.
(B) The Short Way
Or you could also just... start right at the Valley. As a fiction author, I'm a big fan of just skipping to the fun part. Most of my actual-play sessions of Iron Valley have started with my character literally getting off a Taxi/Bus and finding themselves in the town. Anything that happened before that we need to come up with can usually be communicated in the form of brief flashbacks.
Bonus tip(s)!
Remember that as part of character creation you have a series of truths that define why your character is in the Valley and where they are staying! These starting promises are a great way to direct your first days of play since your character is getting their bearings around town. Also, remember that this game is about the journey, the act of discovery, and seeing what happens--and as long as you are having fun then you are playing it right.
Hope this helps 💚
Thank you :D
I hope you have a nice day.
How long did it take you to make this? I'm asking to get a general idea of how long it might take me to make a TTRPG.
Version 1 was made in about a month as part of a game jam. The updates since have taken anywhere from a couple weeks to a month!
so far this game has been very fun. i moved into town, did some farming and fishing. opened up a fortune telling shop and traded a week's worth of tarot readings for a cow. am i doing it right? it feels right. thanks for the cool hack!
You're doing it right, specially because you're having fun 💚
I just want to say thank you for this awesome game!
Thank you for giving it a try!! 😊
Where is the site to get fillable character sheets? I have scoured to try and find it but can't. Also, as a blind gamer, from a first glance at the main book, thank you for properly tagging this. I have just gotten this thanks to someone mentioning it on the Solo RPG reddit post about Solitaria and wanted to check it out because I'm a sucker for Animal Crossing esque games. Thanks for this. I'll report back if I run into any issues and my screen reader, hee.
The fillable character sheets (made by a lovely community member) can be found on by clicking this link. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Hi! I love the idea of this game so much. But I did think your animal ancestry table was a little overwhelming, so I made one based on canon Animal Crossing characters, according to this site (https://animalcrossing.fandom.com/wiki/Species). All regular villagers are listed twice, and all special characters are listed once. That left one spot open, so it can be a robotic version of another animal or a human, since canon AC has only the PC as a human. Thank you for making such an amazing game! I can’t wait until I have appropriate time to play it!
I hope you have fun with the game! Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions, also loving this custom table~ 👍💚
A very well-designed and well-written game to play some Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon with all the advantages of TTRPG (freedom !). Can't wait to test that !
This game is so good, I love it so much that I have downloaded it on three different devices!
You really can play this anyway you want or even with friends
I personally suggest this as a solo ttrpg on GoodNotes :)
Iron Valley is so cute, so colorful, so trans rights, so anti-capitalist. It's truly the chill, relaxing, full of love game we all need sometimes. It's super duper that it's name your own price, accessibility rules! That said, I did pay real money for this, and I use the oracles all the time for everything and every game.
Thank you so much for this lovely message!! These are all the things I wanted Iron Valley to be and I'm happy other people see that as well. Thank you for supporting my little game 🙇♀️💚
Just bought a copy, this is so wonderful and I cant wait to see what else you do with this! It seems like the perfect thing to play with my friends!
Thank you for your lovely comment! I hope you and your friends have fun in the Valley 💚💙
I’ve been going through so much recently and the escape this game has provided has been immeasurable. Thank you for making it accessible as name your own price, thank you for making the game, thank you for absolutely everything! 💙
aww you're welcome!! I am so happy to hear you liked my game! thank you SO MUCH for going out of your way to leave this message 🥺💖
i’ve been absolutely loving this game. i’ve never played a solo RPG (and my time in a group RPG campaign was short-lived). i love writing, and this feels like guided noveling, for lack of a better phrase. i’ve only created my character and built up my own version of iron valley, but as somebody who loves stardew valley, harvest moon, and animal crossing, i can already feel the magic of this game.
because i love making templates, i whipped some up in notion for myself (before realizing others had already done the same)! i plan to add more, but right now i have a calendar, promises, moves, and townies.
Thank you for sharing!! 👍✨
You mentioned that you love writing and I do too! I'm actually a fiction author so I completely get where you're coming from. I hope you have fun playing my little game. Don't hesitate to ask questions~ 💚
Just downloaded last night and started playing and I love it so far! I found the world building element fun, and I enjoy being able to very easily customize gameplay. I'm glad I got this just in time as I'll be going camping soon and this will keep me entertained during the rain. Can't wait to see the next update!
Thank you for the lovely comment, hope the Valley is good company while camping!! 🏕💚
I love this game so much. I've been playing Ironsworn for ages and when I found the original version of Iron Valley I was overjoyed. And this new update? OMG! I can't believe how well it's all come together. And the art is absolutely adorable and totally sells the whole theme and aestetic. Super fun to play! Super simple too! Can't wait for those romantic updates 😗 I really wanna ask my grocer to marry me!
Thank you so much for your sweet comment! I owe IV's development to the community, who's given me lots of feedback 😌💚
I'm a bit deep on my next novel but I promise I'll get back to IV in time, not just for romance but also for the museum update~ 🏛🎣🦋