Age of Iron

2022 - Ongoing

Summary

A post-humanity TTRPG setting

Process

Age of Iron began life as an improv heavy TTRPG season I co-DM'd in 2016. It was initially inspired by Image & Form's SteamWorld Heist. I was enamored with the wide variety of robot designs and the retro-future space-western aesthetic. With a world of robots established we began exploring how best to utilize them. I wanted to run a game where players were forced into paranormal investigation, thus the Iron Inquisition was born.

We created a number of robots to flesh out their ranks and show players how strange they could make their player characters. Robots lend themselves well to comedy, and comedy lends itself well to horror. In some ways, the twisted metal frame of a zombie-bot is more disturbing than a traditional zombie. The first season was extremely well received but I was unable to DM with my partner again before we graduated and parted ways.

In 2022 I discovered FIST and it inspired me to mold Age of Iron to its system. FIST's focus on both the supernatural and "crack team" dynamics made it a natural fit for my world of extraordinary robots. This is where extensive development on AoI began. I was able to rapidly create flavorful NPCs and enemies, I had a system for robots breaking down from damage, and the game was still loose enough to allow humor to flourish behind the horror. I fleshed out my cast of robots from season one and heavily built up the narrative, to the point it scarcely resembles SteamWorld Heist.

The second season was better than the first, and the elements of homebrew have prompted me to push my extensive reflavoring of FIST more towards a full blown hack. Below you will find a link to my collected notes on Age of Iron’s robotic world. Work on season three and further developing the hack continues.