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IRONWOOD ROLEPLAYING GAME
Ironwood is setting-book for the long-since defunct Theatrix RPG, which I've never owned nor heard of previous to purchasing Ironwood. This was the first time that I'd purchased a supplement for a game system I knew nothing about, but I wanted something to read, I was low on cash, and my LGS was blowing out copies of the book for $1, so Lady Fate rolled double sixes.
Ironwood is based on an adult comicbook series by Bill Willingham, creator of the critically-acclaimed Elementals, Coventry, and the current Vertigo series Fables. By "adult comicbook series" I don't mean dark and gritty like Sin City or 100 Bullets, nor do I mean "high literature" like The Sandman, Blankets, or Maus. I mean there is alot of The Nekkid.
Ironwood was an 11-issue erotic comic published by Eros, a subdivision of Fantagraphics that specializes in such material. A fan of Willingham's other work, I'd heard of Ironwood but never sought it out simply because of its mature content. I know there apparently are a large group of people who can get aroused from the sight of a comicbook character naked, but I apparently lack that capacity. I was very surprised to come across a roleplaying game based upon the series. I guess the Theatrix people thought there was potentially an untapped audience of gamers who would enjoy games featuring overt sexual themes (as opposed to the repressed and metaphoric sexual angst of White Wolf and co.) In retrospect, I think it's safe to say they guessed wrong.
STYLE
Ironwood is 288 pages, softcover, with black and white interior. It is copiously illustrated by Willingham, primarily with panels from the Ironwood series, but also with quite a few original drawings. It goes without saying that the art is evocative of and appropriate to the setting, though that does mean that includes quite a bit of The Nekkid. I'm not sure how much of a turn-off that is for some (excuse the pun). I like Willingham's art, it's not perfect, but it has a charm about it and a realistic consitency that bespeaks of a pre-Image comicbook artist. My only real critique is that perhaps the weakest picture in the book was used as the cover, blown up and distorted and amateurishly coloured.
Otherwise, the text and layout of the book is clear, ordered, and accesible. There is no index, but the organization of the book is clear enough and the information presented in such an intuitive manner that I didn't feel its absence at any point.
SYSTEM
As I'd never encountered nor heard tell of Theatrix before purchasing Ironwood, and since Theatrix is long since out-of-print with not even a copy on Amazon that I could find, I had to engage in a bit of reverse-engineering to discover the system. Using information gathered from old reviews and fansites on the web as well as the implications made in Ironwood itself, I was able to come up with an approximation of the Theatrix rules-set.
Theatrix is a diceless rpg that uses a universal rating scale of 1 to 10, and requires players to purchase traits and skills by writing descriptions of varying lengths and complexity. For example, to purchase a 2 point trait, a player would only need to provide a short and simple blurb of exposition ( "Grok's used a knife once or twice in his life" ), whereas to purchase an 8 point skill, the player would need to wax eloquently about what convoluted history the character had that led them to be declared Duke of such and such a country. As such, Ironwood's gaming material is enjoyable to read, very accesible to someone who doesn't know the system and is easily adaptable to any other system of the reader's choice.
SUBSTANCE
Ironwood starts with a preface that gives of a brief overview of the events of the comicbook series issue by issue, much like the GoO Tenchi and El Hazard RPGs. Then there is the table of contents, a short introduction that talks about the Theatrix system and the organization of the book, and then the book is divided into 9 meaty chapters that describe the world and inhabitants of Ironwood.
Ironwood takes place on Avalon, an alternate dimension parallel to our own and part of a multi-dimensional cosmology that includes, among others, our own world and the world of Willingham's Coventry comic (a nice and unexpected nod to one of my favourite discontinued comicbook series). Avalon is a magic-rich realm ruled behind the scenes by Merlin, resting place of the sleeping King Arthur, and crawling with Goblins and Faeries. Its creation myths state that the world was created by the Dragon-God Orm and its essence and the magical energy that pervades the realm is provided by the children of Orm, True Dragons. It reminded me a bit of the set-up for the the French rpg Reve: The Dream Orobourus. Ironwood is the name of a large forested realm in Avalon where most of the events of the comicbook series take place.
The culture of Avalon is grounded in the Western European middle ages, very much a typical post-Tolkien High Fantasy fuedal world, though there are a few twists. The Catholic Church has a very strong presence in Ironwood, as does its VERY militant off-shoot, The Church of Christ Avenger. Ironwood is inbued with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humour and satre, and the world has a very Discworld-like quality to it. Magic in Avalon is not only ludicrously dangerous and unpredictable, it is based upon complex legal issues of spell patents and copyrights. A vampire kingdon exist in Avalon that manages to co-exist with the living kingdoms because of the very strict VDC (Vampire Dietary Commision). The Celtic tribal communities of Elves act very much like modern day mafiosa.
As I mentioned above, magic in Ironwood is very volatile and umpredictable. The magic system provided is extensive, well-defined, complex, convoluted, and it is pretty much inevitable that any character using magic will eventually get messed up badly. As such, it is hilarious to read and, IMO, basically useless to a player character without a Paranoia-esque suicidal kinda bent. It fits the setting, is humerous, and it doesn't disallow players from being mages, it simply lets them know the risks and allows them to set up themselves for tragic consequences. For many, however, this is probably a bug. From what I understand, the Theatrix core ruels provide their own, more standardized magic system which could be used instead for non-suicidal pc mages.
The various religions of Avalon are given an indepth chapter as well, describing not only the organization and structure of the two Christian faiths, but also giving an account of the myriad of pagan religious practiced by the goblin races.
Finally, a large portion of the book is given up to describing the various races and creatures that inhabit Avalon. The bevy of fantasy-rich and detailed Goblin and Faerie races provided here are practically worth the price of admission alone ( I mean, assuming you paid more than $1), along with an extensive bestiary. Even if no other aspect of this book appealed to you, the amount of ideas here that could be mined for any kind of fantasy game are gratuitous.
CONCLUSIONS
Ironwood suffers from three pretty major drawbacks: 1) It is a supplement for a gameline that is long since defunct; 2) Ironwood itself is long out of print and not readily available; and 3) The adult themes and content presented are more than likely a deterent for a lot of people, whether they are simply not interested in pronographic material mixed in with their roleplaying hobby, they are simply too embarassed to purchase it, or they are too young. All that aside, if you were to come across a discounted copy, I very much recommend picking it up. Besides being a thoroughly entertaining read, there are tons of ideas herein that can be mined for any sort of fantasy game.
As an interesting postscript, while I was researching Theatrix on the web I came across some interesting trivia relating to the history of RPGs in general. In May of 1994, when Theatrix was first released, the co-author David Berkman joined the online discussion group the RGFA, a forum founded in 1992 as an outlet for heated arguments over the best system or style of roleplaying. Berkman aggresively championed the Theatrix system as well as diceless roleplaying in general, advocating this style of play over all others. This soon sparked off a controversial year-long thread on "Dice vs Diceless". The participants eventually agreed to form a typology of games describing the differences in various approaches. The terms "simulation" and "simulationism" came into use during this period. It was from these discussions that the eventual GNS three-fold model of RPG theory sprung forth, which retains its noteriety and infamy on the online rpg forums to this day.
