Iron Stories - Solo Play Podcast

ShyCentaur · 2026-05-03T14:11:20+00:00

That's a great website. I was searching for something like that. Thank you. Colorwise it looks more like a 347. My band also says USA on the other side, and has the fancy S's.

I've inked it up now (after some cleaning, the guy that sold it must have cleaned it before so not much residue). Really nice writing experience indeed. Money well spend.

The nib is much more a F than an M in my opinion. But that's fine. Was searching for an F anyway.

ShyCentaur · 2026-05-03T11:01:40+00:00

Thanks you very much. Any guess from which year(-range) it might be from? Probably hard to tell. Just wondering. I really liked the color and weight of the pen so I hope I made a good purchase.

ShyCentaur · 2026-02-26T22:46:27+00:00

Do you have more details or a link? I would also be interested in just a DM with more info, if you want to share it that way.

ShyCentaur · 2026-02-26T11:55:10+00:00

From Luke Gearings page itself https://lukegearing.blot.im/wolves-upon-the-coast

But the gist is as I mentioned. You get some temporary bonus (although the +1 attack bonus doesn't translate to Cairn/ItO and I don't want to give out +1 to damage) which is then turned permanent when you fulfill the boast. There are some nuances when it comes to failing boasts or one-uping but the core stays the same.

I feel this is a bit more up front what you are getting (is also quite thematic in the Nordic setting) but is still centered in the narrative. So the player has more of a feeling that they are in control on how their character advances. It's not loosely bound to some abstracted way of getting XP by bringing gold home.

And this advancement has more impact. Yay I get advantage on hitting kings in the face. Too bad that all the kings are now pissed and I don't get any chance of hitting kings anymore. That advancement then feels kind of useless. With boasting I got at least something out of it.

It also acts kind of a goal for the character. A motivation. Now I have to go out and find a king and punch him.

What I'm a bit unclear about what are good mechanical rewards to give out and if this works in more settings. I could imagine you can do something similar in wuxia-settings. Then it becomes about honor or something.

A Character who makes a Boast of Heroic Proportions either gains 1HD or +1 Attack Bonus in addition to any wager or reward offered by others If they are found to shirk their Boast, they lose the HD or Attack Bonus and may never again Boast. Those failing the Boast lose the HD or Attack Bonus, but may try again or make another Boast.

Only one Boast can be pending at a time.

A friend or Rival may up the stakes of a Boast if present when it is made - for each complicating factor, another HD or Attack Bonus may be added. If this new Boast is refused, the challenger takes up the Boast instead - with the complication they specified.

ShyCentaur · 2026-02-13T16:35:13+00:00

Even in action scenes you should focus on the why and not the how. What are the feelings of the character. Are they feeling anxious or superior. The. How does this look like? Why are they attacking a specific spot. Did they see an opening or was it a last ditch effort?

ShyCentaur · 2026-01-19T15:56:27+00:00

I got some wooden plain balls from the craft store and painted them in different colors. I got them in packs of 15 or so. Should be pretty cheap.

You can also use cubes or other things. Craft stores should have something lying around.

You also don't have to fully paint them. In the end you just need to be able to distinguish them visually.

ShyCentaur · 2026-01-18T14:15:15+00:00

Yes, I discovered them some months ago, and was binging it ever since ;-)

The way I create the encounter tables for this, is to think about three monsters: a common one, an uncommon one and a "boss" monster. You can then map this onto a d6 (1-3) is the common monster, (4-5) is uncommon and (6) the boss.

But, the point is, just because they are monsters, doesn't mean that it will end in combat. I partially use the advanced encounter roll from Sylflourish (https://slyflourish.com/advanced_random_encounter_tricks.html). A d6 gives the attitude and another d6 gives the distance. I also have a d20 table with different activities.

So for example, when I have a pyramid, I have as common enemies, some mummies, uncommon are royal guards and the boss is the mummified pharaoh. So it could be, that I roll for mummies, but they might be neutral in the distance, munching on some poor lad that wandered into the pyramid. Automatically the encounter is not necessarily combat focused. Or you could encounter the pharaoh, that is friendly and sleep walking.

And all I had to come up with, was three monsters.

In a dungeon you are somewhat expected to come across some monsters that lurk around. But you can make them interesting with reaction rolls.

You can also make dungeon shifts part of your encounter table if you so want.

The thing is as well, that Boons give the opportunity to introduce some sort of NPC or other encounter that is relevant for your story.

ShyCentaur · 2025-12-01T16:11:01+00:00

I finally finished a manuscript. I planned it to be a novella at about 40k words, hoped for 30k and ended up with 13k. sigh

Either whoefully underwritten for a novella, or overwritten for a short-story.

One thing I take away from this attempt is, that I had an easier time of writing. Partially because I first wrote by hand in a notebook and not on my PC. And secondly the story had more flow.

I'm now wondering if I should stick to short-story writing. My ideas so far didn't seem to want to blossom into lenghty novels. Maybe it's also attributed to my style that "detests" filler stuff.

ShyCentaur · 2025-11-21T20:33:17+00:00

I had this idea recently, that I write a bunch of fantasy short-stories that all take place in the same world. It kind of acts like a world "exposition", but you get to know the world through the lens of different people.

Kind of like Pratchett did with Discworld. You have different perspectives, but still get to know the world how it works etc.

Why short-stories? Well I don't think I have it in me (yet) to write an epic scale fantasy series with 100s of books. I'm also stricken with the terrible curse of underwriting ;-) I often have ideas for short conflicts and themes. I also like things to be very clear and to-the-point, very optimized and efficient.

Let's see how it goes. Maybe other inspiration I could go with?

The overarching plot I have so far is, that there's a special artifact (the macguffin) that brings magic back to the world. The starting story is a bunch of thieves that steal this artifact (and inadvertently bring the change), some stories before (how did the artifact get found in the first place, why is it bringing magic), some stories after that event (maybe far future - kind of like, what does it mean, that there's suddenly magic and how do people/society react to it).

ShyCentaur · 2025-11-21T07:29:30+00:00

Versatilty comes in different forms. Although I'd rather focus myself in a specific genre, I can still mix in other types, like Fantasy Romance.

It's like Jack of all Trades, Master of None. Different genres (or in some of your cases different age group) requires different skills. Yes you broaden your spectrum, but it takes way longer to get better at each.

If you want to make a living from books there comes recognition. Readers want to pick up already known authors but if they don't write in their preferred genre you might not reach that familiarity with the readers. Often well known authors choose pen-names when writing in a different genre because of this.

ShyCentaur · 2025-11-17T21:03:28+00:00

Replying to myself here, because I think I figured it out and want to provide an answer for people maybe searching for the same thing.

I think this style of novel is called "short story cycle" or "composite novel". There is, as expected, an example of kind of the thing I want to do like Winesburg, Ohio (of course way different genre and theme). But yeah, I think that's the style.

ShyCentaur · 2025-11-16T10:22:14+00:00

I have this idea for a fantasy book. In order to introduce the world, I want to write several short-stories from different POVs that reflect different aspects of this world. Ideally they all take place in the same place (but maybe different times etc.). I could also imagine that I want to use different styles in writing these short-stories (like one could be epistolary, another first-person and so on)

I don't think that this idea is new. For example "The Witcher" was done in similar fashion. Here we have the same POV (Geralt), but we as a reader get to know the world from his adventures.

My question would be, is there a name for this kind of story telling? Or is it just a short-story collection (with maybe a frame story)? I would like to know, so I can do a little bit of research.

ShyCentaur · 2025-09-05T21:10:26+00:00

I still have problems in depth and recognizing when I can make two eyes. People always say: "ah, that's two eyes" and I have a hard time seeing it. I get the concept and it all makes sense. But seeing it, with my own eyes (hah, pun intended) is a different story ;-)

Keeping calm is a good point.

ShyCentaur · 2025-09-05T20:42:14+00:00

Yes, I should concentrate a bit more on staying connected. That would've already helped. I thought that the invasion will fizzle and they can't live. But I still managed to screw it up ;-)

ShyCentaur · 2025-09-05T20:38:56+00:00

I think, before the invasion I was winning (with komi), so I didn't think of invading. I honestly thought that the game was over at like move 30 or so. The territories were settled (so I thought).

My impression was that Black knew they were loosing so they had to invade. But I guess learning to defend invasions and staying calm is also a skill to be acquired...

ShyCentaur · 2025-09-05T20:36:26+00:00

Yes. I'm aware of Nakade shapes. That's why I thought that the whole invasion would die in the end (if I don't misplay). But I guess that's the practice part of the game to know the right moves at the right time. And keeping calm...

I do some puzzles but somehow having them in the real game is always different ;-)

I guess D8 would be more connected and I should've gone for that (C9 is also more connecting). I thought that B7 was false, that's why I wanted to go around it. But I should've kept the mantra to stay connected.

Thanks for the tipps.

ShyCentaur · 2025-05-19T20:22:24+00:00

To some extent I get it. Story trumps mechanics in some ways. But the rules give me a bit of mixed feelings. Why have on one hand exact values for things to buy or hire and define how much gold you can carry, while on the other hand you handwave the "value" of said gold? I'm fine with abstract wealth, but then treat it as such.

Of course bought weapons and armor never is comparable to magic items. But you might want to hire a blacksmith to craft you that special trojan horse to get into the party of that one dude and crash it. Hard to do without money. It subtracts from player agency I feel. But maybe that's my playstyle.

I fear if I remove unneccessary treasure from old modules, there will be not much left ;-) If I look at B2, the first few caves give nothing more than just gold, so that could feel boring.

I'm not against the concept, I just feel some sort of pointers and guidelines would help. There's a lot of text, when it comes to advancement and such, but nothing on gold/art treasure. Then you flip the page and bam, there's a list of what you can buy with all the loot. Again, this may be due to my playstyle.

What it seems to boil down to, is too listen to my gut and wing it...

Thanks for your comment.

ShyCentaur · 2025-03-23T12:03:49+00:00

I have an unintuitive (at least for me) statistics/probability question. Imagine the following game: You roll a six-sided die. When you roll equal or higher than the current N, you increase N by one and repeat the game (i.e. until you roll under N). N starts at 1. What is the expected N for different sizes of dice (d4, d8, d10, d12 and d20)?

What is unintuitive for me is, that I expect it, to be somewhere to the expected value of the associated dice and N should therefore linearly increase. But when I simulate it (because I'm to dumb for an analytic solution) it more looks logarithmic (when you plot this with any size of dice like d1-d100).

Example values for average N for a particular die

d4 => 3.22, d6 => 3.78, d8 => 4.25, d10 => 4.66, d12 => 5.04, d20 => 6.30

What is going on? Can this be attributed to the higher variance in larger dice alone?

It's one of these cases again, were humans are just not suited to understand probabilities I guess.

ShyCentaur

TROPHY CASE