#there is no real threat. especially in bigger parties where the players DOMINATE action economy. they are always in control

[elftwink]

been learning to play ironsworn (gritty fantasy ttrpg which you can play with a gm but is mostly suited for solo or small group co-op gmless play) after having the rulebook pdf for several years (stars finally aligned to remove invisible thing blocking me from reading it idk) because i'm on another solo ttrpg kick & i don't know what took me so long to get around to this game because it genuinely is exactly what i was looking for. years ago when i was playing through solo 5e modules i should have just been playing ironsworn (believe it or not, 5e isn't very suited to solo play and is extremely clunky when you try lol).

also though i have dabbled in some other solo ttrpgs, a considerable amount of them are journaling games which is fun but imo considerably more work (usually by the time i'm a quarter of the way through the journal entry, i know how to entire scene played out and i want to move on to the next gameplay thing, so i get frustrated and bored quickly. it feels like when you solve a level in a video game but don't have the coordination to pull off the necessary move so you have to spend 20 extra minutes doing something you already figured out), so i really appreciate like not needing to write something for the game to progress (ive been taking notes for my own record since im playing solo and thus am not really out loud roleplaying the way you do in a group, but i definitely could do that instead and not take notes and the game would still function perfectly)

& ive been playing by myself but also in the past ive played a lot of ttrpgs in very small groups which has been other games but is mostly dnd and like. we also should have been playing ironsworn so that having a gm was not necessary. have definitely played games where we had to adapt the rules soooo much to do something that is just base game included in ironsworn. plus it's rules-light enough to do pretty complex moves that pose difficulties in bulkier games (ever introduced someone to dnd and they tell you they want to do a sick backflip and catch something and then attack and you have to tell them that will require several different consecutive rolls and some creative liberties with how the rules are 'supposed' to let you move? you can just Do That in ironsworn. use the strike move and describe it. done!)

the one thing is that although it's rules-light enough to theoretically play any setting or genre (some with more difficulty than others), ive found so far that like... the grittiness and sense of threat is very built into the mechanics so that would be sort of difficult to work around or change (but i think it's great from a game design perspective). what i mean is like, okay: you start with 5 max hp. there isn't really a way to raise this max hp, you just slowly gain abilities (assets) that make you less likely to have to lose the hp in the first place, or that make it easier to recover. when you encounter foes, you rank them on a scale of 1 -5, and enemies on the lowest side of this scale do one harm to you, while enemies on the highest side do five harm to you. so even though encountering an epic enemy won't always be deadly due to the assets you have, they are ALWAYS capable of taking you down to 0 hp with one good hit. so the feeling of threat is much more present compared to games where your character starts to be able to just tank and push through a failure or huge threat.

admittedly also i'm playing solo, im still learning how to balance combat, and also i built a character who has NO combat talents and iron (the close quarters fighting stat) is one of my lowest stats so i personally am under much more threat than if you built a character who knew how to fight or who could do deadly harm. but also the other thing about combat is it's extremely difficult to maintain control of the fight; you have to score a strong hit to do it on basically all moves, and there's a really limited pool of moves available when you don't have the initiative, and obviously none of them really favour you. i don't know that this makes combat genuinely more difficult, but it does make you feel like the fight is always about to spiral out of your control. every second you let it drag without decisive action feels like it brings you closer to dying. like i said, this is a feature of the game design and not a problem in any way. just thinking about it because when i was initially learning i was going to try to supplant it into a homebrew fantasy world of my own but the tone just wouldn't be right. and that it is somewhat difficult to replicate the kind of worlds that i typically play or run for dnd, which tend to lean somewhat sillier and definitely much higher fantasy

but i like to try new things and tbh especially in dnd i find that i very rarely feel that sense of threat and when i do feel it, it has nothing at all to do with the actual mechanics and reality of the combat and everything to do with how well the dm sells it to me and makes it sound and feel scary and dangerous. which is a testament to what a good gm can do for you but i do appreciate the threat feeling more built-in and also being actually real.