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
Click download now to get access to the following files:
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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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
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~ 🏛🎣🦋
The art is so cute!
Thank you! I'm really happy to hear that 🙈💖
Really psyched for this. I notice the hyperlinks (a great feature) seem to be broken in 1.2.
Hi Grey! Thank you for your comment. I just checked the files I uploaded and links are working on my end?
Here are two possible solutions:
- Redownload the rulebook and see if that does it
- Check your PDF reader settings to see if it needs your permission to trust links
I hope this helps! Thank you for checking out my book 💚
Thanks so much for the quick response! I had already checked that links were working in other files, including your 1.1. When I reloaded the same 1.2 file just now, they suddenly worked fine there as well. Go figure. Anyway, now I can check out your community resources!
No worries! Glad I could help 👍
This is absolutely delightful and rich and thoughtful and WELL DONE, YOU
Aww, thank you!! 🥰💕
Yesterday evening, I did a playthrough of Iron Valley testing out some of the new stuff in version 1.1. I had a lot of fun and figured I'd share my playthrough here in case anyone was interested:
Thank you for sharing, Thomas! 💚
Hello, I have some questions about the rules. Sorry if this gets too long, but I'm quite new to TTRPGs and I want to get the rules right.
1. For Spirit of the Forest: What does "it complicates things" and "you're asking the wrong question" mean?
2. When working on a promise and journaling the events, does each written record need to be connected? Or is the journaling process more like a bunch of snippets out of a day?
3. Getting to know my host: Do I fill in their Townie sheet little by little as I work on the promise, or is this promise meant to be like additional info about the host?
4. Skills Chart: How much satisfaction do I have at the start? Second, how do I know which skill to use? Is it basically open to interpretation, like imagining which skill could work best?
5. Try Your Best: When losing track of time, what kind of consequences would it include? What could "failure" look like in Iron Valley? Any examples would be good!
6. Can I choose to cancel a promise?
7. Stats: Since some stats are stronger, what's the purpose of using the weaker stats? Is it mainly for adding variety to the narrative? Also, what could stealth be used for in Iron Valley? Couldn't this create conflicts or mistrust within the community?
Hi Rina! Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Thank you so much for reaching out, I really appreciate your feedback and hope that these answers help. 💚
1. My intention with those results is to spice things up! Those additional results (although rare) gives the player a chance to look at an otherwise binary situation through a new lens.
2. This is completely up to you! When I play on my own, I like to write a simple list of the events that happened. Sometimes it's just one, summarizing the entire day in a sentence, sometimes it's a long list carefully describing everything that happened. When I play on stream I don't journal at all! So whatever works for you is valid~
3. The latter is correct! The information you get through making a Townie is just the start. Getting to know them is all about spending time with them, learning about their past, their dreams, and so on~
4. You start with no satisfaction (and earn it as part of completing promises). You do start the game with 2 skills with the first upgrade (+1 to Rolls) and 1 skill with the second upgrade (+1 to Rolls and +1 Tick on Hit). As to what skills to pick, go what feels right for your character, you may not have the best skill set--but that's okay! Alternative, you could also build the perfect character for your story. There is no wrong answer as to how you build your character~
5. The tone of Iron Valley is a cozy one, meaning that failure doesn't always have to include dramatic retribution or anything like that. Losing track of time can be as simple as your character wasting time because they were not properly prepared, didn't have the right tools, or it could be simply because they made a mistake. Of course, one of my favorite ways of treating failure is to lose track of time chatting with other Townies. This is part of the heart of this game, sure it's a failure but it doesn't mean that it has to be heartbreaking. Your character can truly mean to finish building that chair only to lose hours chatting with their bestie.
6. This is the first time someone has brought this up--and I am endlessly grateful for your question. I will be adding an additional rule in the 1.2 update so here's a sneak peek:
7. Different stats serve different purposes. When you use the move Try Your Best you are asked to pick an approach, and each approach calls for a different stat. Sometimes you might have to use a low stat because that is the approach the narrative asks for. If you need to run as fast as possible to catch a train, you'd have to use Edge--even if it is your lowest stat. As for being stealthy, some more mischievous characters might have a good use for it. Or maybe a master bug-hunter who knows just how to sneak up onto the rarest specimens?
That being said, anyone can make use of Shadow. Sneaking out of the house? Shadow. Hiding from your boss? Shadow. Telling your crush you don't like them even though you really, really do? Shadow.
I hope this helps clear things up. Once again, thank you so much for your questions! I hope to keep making the game better and better. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you need more help 💚
--Maxi
Thank you so much!! <3 I might have additional questions in the future, so thanks as well for offering!
I don't have any more questions at the moment besides this, but wanted to ask-
For skills such as Cooking and Blacksmithing, do we need to gain resources first in order to use them? I think you mentioned that we have the option to either work for resources or get it from someone/somewhere, but yeah I was also curious about this.
You can choose whether you want to gather all the resources manually or just abstract away that you have the materials you need on hand. This is to give players a little bit of freedom on how granular they want the game to be (for example if you're playing an alchemist you may want to be granular about potions but not about tailoring).
There is a mechanical change I want to highlight depending on your approach, if you abstract away having to get all the materials when you use the move Reap the Benefits then you'll only gain (1) value of your crafted item per filled box.
This means you ultimately get a little less for your efforts, but since you didn't have to get everything from scratch it all evens out. 🐮
i love this game so much!!!!!!!!!!!
This is absolutely adorable. I love Iron Valley.
Any chance for a mailing list or dedicated website for updates and whatnot? I’ve been following the game since mid-February (I procrastinate badly enough it could be mistaken for lurking), and it seems like I’m checking back here every two or three days because I absolutely don’t want to miss an update. I’m afraid I’ll miss it if I rely solely on the feed.
Hi there! I am actually currently working on gathering up all the resources for players to have in one easy place. I will be sharing those links here very soon, but for now here's an early version of the website for Iron Valley!
I also want to add that if you use Discord, I have several channels on my server (link in the website) dedicated to Iron Valley where people ask questions, share custom content, and I post updates!
I hope this helps. Thank you so much for giving my game a chance and wanting to stay up to date~ 💖
So far having a lot of fun with Iron Valley! It took a bit for me to really get into it but I really enjoy it! So far I've made friends with the owl in the attic and am now dedicated to making them feel at home. Have a happy spring!
Thank you for sharing! Iron Valley is still a budding RPG (pun mostly intended) so it's a little rough around the edges, don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions! 🌷🌼🌻
Ahghh thank youu! You're doing great!
Did you get that plot point from the story hook oracle? If so, I'm so happy to see this omg (I made that one hehe)
Eeeee yeah! I loved those prompts! Great work!
I've just started playing and I'm already an adoptive parent in a family baking contest against a friendly rival townie. Adorable 🥰. I'm looking forward to whatever you guys have planned, so keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for sharing!! I am so touched to hear you are having fun with my little game 🥺 I hope you have lots of fun in the Valley 💚💚💚
Rolling on all the oracles when generating a Townie can be kind of tedious and takes me out of the flow, so I've written a Perchance generator to do it with a single click:
https://perchance.org/iron-valley-townies
(I also added hair and eye color from another generator, as I find that useful.)
Thank you for the addition~! We are working on bringing all of the oracles to chartopia (there's already a townie generator there too).
Would you mind if I added your generator to a list of community resources? 🦝✨
Go right ahead!
(Personally, I loathe Chartopia's interface, which is why I rolled my own on Perchance.)
That's awesome! I've been slowly compiling my own perchance generators for a home game lol
https://perchance.org/ironvalleycampaign
https://perchance.org/iron-valley-gen
I love these!! 😲💖💖💖
I love how you adapted the rolls (I got the amnesia starting promise and the way you worked it into the generator made me laugh!). Thank you so much for making these, would you be okay with me sharing them in the book/community resource pages? 🙇♀️
Absolutely!! I'll let ya know if I make any more! They're still under a bit of development haha, but the nice thing about the links is that ya don't have to change them in order to get the updated version lol
I am so happy! Thank you for this update. Congratulations! Please support this wonderful work of art.
I'm only a third of the way through the new version, but this is a *huge* update, and definitely enhances that Stardew Harvest Crossing feel!
Any chance this will get a cooperative mode like Ironsworn? Really want to be co-villagers with my friends!
Version 1.1 is a hefty update already but I would love to sneak in some more info on co-op play, I don't think it would require any additional rules changes (other than making an adjustment to the length of a day for the increased player count). I will try my darnest to get it into the next update 🤞💕
No pressure whatsoever! It’s your vision. Thank you for this awesome game 😁
By the way! This new updated version (1.1) has rules for co-op and guided modes of play, as promised 👍✨✨
Amazing! Thanks for letting me know <3
I made some basic worksheets in Google Sheets. Links will open in this tab/window:
[Edit: Some of the files were broken. New URLs should work.]
This is awesome, thank you!! 😲💕💕💕
this…is…adorable. I’m obsessed! I can’t wait to try this out. I may combine it with Ironsworn proper or some other game to add some light dungeon exploration/combat, but only because I want to play something with similar vibes to games like Rune Factory. Someone recommended this game to me on Reddit and I can’t be more grateful to them. I’m only just reading through the move pages but I already think this will help me get exactly where I want with a game. And it’s so hefty! I can’t wait to see what more you have in store and can already guarantee that whenever you are ready to put out a physical version…you have a buyer here!
Hey! I'm thinking of hacking this game a tiny bit to fit the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon setting, and was planning on posting my writing of it on Ao3. If I credit you would that be chill?
You don't have to credit me at all, though if you do that it'd be greatly appreciated! 🙇♀️
Super funny coincidence, I came here to add the notion template I made and found that melpomephy made one too. Melpomephy made theirs much more aesthetically pleasing while mine is set up for more of an emphasis on character building.
This is a modified version of the character builder I use for other solo RPGs so I tend to insert photos.
Have fun
Thank you for sharing! 😊🌺
Hi, Annilite! When I follow the link, it says I don't have access to your Notion and must contact you. If you mean to share the template, could you check the settings? Thank you!
Thank you so much! Let me know if it works now if you happen to try it!
That worked, thanks!
Hi!! So, I am absolutely in love with this game and it may have become my new hyperfocus so, as usual, I spent an unreasonable amount of time making something! This thing is a notion template for everyone that wants to play digitally, since notion is basically a digital notebook with a ton of cool features.
No one needs to know how to use notion in depth to use the template, but if you want you can do a lot o cool stuff like link to a townies page every time you mention them, or make things colorful, or put cool images to illustrate the game, or whatever else your heart desired (and notion supports, of course).
Also, I have one question: in the future, will there be descriptions of the holidays?
Oh my god this is so cute!! Thank you so much for sharing this! If it would be okay, would you mind me putting a link to this in the book as part of the 1.1 update? Also, to answer your question, descriptions of the holidays is a part of the update! 100% confirmed! 😉💖
Yeah, of course!! I maintain a couple templates already, so the link shouldn’t stop working anytime soon, but I’ll try and remember to update the template when 1.1 is released
I commented mine too! Really cool to see other people's Notion templates!!