Hello all and wel­come to our fab­u­lous new place on the net!

So kick back, have a leisurely stroll through these pages, and relate or ask what­ever you came here for. We’re sure you’ll find our lit­tle com­mu­nity a very friendly, help­ful, and con­sid­er­ate one. So, to start out, why not take a moment to intro­duce your­self?

Myself, I’m Michael, like it reads to the left. I’m an invet­er­ate role­player of more than a quar­ter of a cen­tury, and I have a lit­er­ally life­long love of Sword & Sor­cery fic­tion that started before I knew how to read myself, when of the genre’s pre­cur­sors, the Nibelun­gen­lied, was read to me as an infant. And I am one of the authors of Blade of the Iron Throne.

Hi Folks and wel­come aboard!

My name is Phil and I look for­ward to shar­ing my two pas­sions with you – Blade of the Iron Throne, and its cousin, Sword & Sor­cery fic­tion from that genre’s golden age. Like many of you, I dis­cov­ered role-​playing in my teens, and have for years searched for an a game that fea­tured an evoca­tive Sword & Sor­cery blend in it’s han­dling of both com­bat and sor­cery. With Blade I have finally scratched that itch.

I hope you enjoy this game as much as Michael and myself enjoyed bring­ing it to you!

Regards,

Phil

Greet­ings all,

I first encoun­tered The Rid­dle of Steel back in 2002 or there­abouts. I was look­ing for a role-​playing game, one whose com­bat sys­tem most closely mim­ic­ked real-​life melee com­bat. Jake, the author of TRoS, was an ARMA expo­nent and had won the endorse­ment of the ARMA orga­ni­za­tion for his game. This, I thought, must surely be the game I was look­ing for.

It was — and a whole lot more besides. Quite lit­er­ally TRoS changed the way I gamed — all the way down to what I was look­ing for in each RPG ses­sion I played.

I par­tic­i­pated reg­u­larly on The Forge when it held the TRoS forum and then when TRoS was sold I par­tic­i­pated on the offi­cial TRoS forum. Even­tu­ally as inter­est in the game waned from the own­ers I cre­ated and main­tained the unof­fi­cial TRoS forum, tros­fans. Tros­fans began on Jan­u­ary 18, 2008. On Jan­u­ary 17, 2013 it will be locked as it becomes an archive for what was an out­stand­ing, inno­v­a­tive game. A five year run in which around 11,000 posts were made across 600-​odd top­ics by about 230 peo­ple.

On tros­fans by far the most word­count was ded­i­cated to a hypo­thet­i­cal suc­ces­sor to TRoS. Every aspect of the game, every con­cept, was ana­lyzed and alter­na­tives were pro­posed. Con­cepts that were miss­ing in TRoS were raised and dis­cussed, to see whether they should or could be included in a suc­ces­sor. In short, the analy­sis was exhaus­tive and com­pre­hen­sive. Yet no game fell out of that analy­sis, for it was a mael­strom on which no obvi­ous order set­tled. There were too many dichotomies to allow one par­tic­u­lar path to emerge.

Then Michael and Phil formed Iron Throne Pub­lish­ing and they wrote Blade of the Iron Throne.

Within a week or so Blade will be released. And then this site will become a com­mu­nity as peo­ple explore its depths and start to play this out­stand­ing game.

My own play­ing days are rare these days. There are four chil­dren in our fam­ily and three of them are under three years of age. Yet my wife and I are in the midst of sound­ing out another cou­ple to come and try Blade, and we’ve got our eyes open for another cou­ple to join us. A monthly game sounds like a lot of fun. It has been too long.

Now, if I can just work out how to inte­grate minia­tures into these com­bat scenes…

Regards,

Hello.

I ran into TROS about a year and a half ago while look­ing for grit­tier more real­is­tic com­bat — a friend men­tioned I might like TROS, so I searched around and was able to pick up a copy off of Ebay. Pretty spec­tac­u­lar stuff. I really enjoyed the spir­i­tual attrib­utes and how com­bat worked, and the sys­tem in gen­eral. This lead to me lurk­ing on the tros­fans web­site and perus­ing all the var­i­ous dis­cus­sions and such and glean­ing dif­fer­ent ideas.

I saw that you all were work­ing on Blade and I was pretty thrilled at the idea of a suc­ces­sor and what kind of changes and pol­ish­ing up has been done. So here I lurk again…

Hi all,

really look­ing for­ward to hav­ing a look at the work you have all done. Have liked Tros for an age, even though I thought it had quite a few prob­lems to it, so I want to thank all those who took their time to work out a new ver­sion of it!

Hi gang

I’ve been role­play­ing for over 33 years now. I dis­cov­ered TRoS in 2002 and instantly fell in love with the game despite some of its flaws. I’ve been on the orig­i­nal Drift­wood Pub­lish­ing forums, the TRoS­Fans forum and, in des­per­ate antic­i­pa­tion for Blade of the Iron Throne, I am now here. This is a truly excit­ing time and I can’t wait for BotIT to be made available!

Hi all,

In 2004 I was liv­ing in east Asia. The Tem­ples of Angkor cap­tured my imag­i­na­tion and I begun to think up a great tale of dark fan­tasy. I had a lot of time to read back then and picked up a col­lec­tion of Conan sto­ries. I was hooked on the genre. When I returned to the States, I was hop­ing to host an RPG with my friends where I could explore the story ideas I had. Unfor­tu­nately, no game sys­tem really seemed to do what I wanted. And then, some­how, I found TROS. Later I even joined a local chap­ter of Jake Norwood’s new group, the HEMA alliance. Now I was not only hooked on Sword-​and-​Sorcery, I was also hooked on swords and sword­play!

I par­tic­i­pated in the TROS­Fans com­mu­nity for a good long while but it seemed pretty obvi­ous I had noth­ing to con­tribute to where Michael, Ian, and Phil were going. I’m glad to see their labor of love is com­ing together and I look for­ward to the new com­mu­nity it will cre­ate.

Best,
Sean.

Hi all. I found TRoS com­par­a­tively late: think it was early 2011. I loved many things about the game, includ­ing its quirks and defi­cien­cies, none of which seemed insur­mount­able. Unfor­tu­nately, I never did man­age to play an actual game, because despite my remon­stra­tions, my RPG friends insist on hav­ing a life, includ­ing off­spring etc. I’m sure that the oppor­tu­ni­ties will come again, and I am really look­ing for­ward to it.

Unlike many oth­ers it seems, I’m not yet quite con­vinced as to whether Iron Throne is a step closer to the game I am look­ing for, or a step fur­ther away. I am, how­ever, full of admi­ra­tion for what Michael and Phil have achieved, and I will sup­port Iron Throne whole­heart­edly while I make up my mind! I’m sure there will be many oppor­tu­ni­ties to dis­cuss my reser­va­tions in other threads…

I’m also rather sorry to hear that the TROS­fans forum is clos­ing shop, although I can under­stand the deci­sion. Thankyou, Ian, for pro­vid­ing such a won­der­ful resource for TRoS, from which Iron Throne appears to be a direct result. Will there be any room for TRoS dis­cus­sion on this forum? (My apolo­gies if that ques­tion has already been answered else­where!)

And what am I going to do with over a hun­dred d10’s now, dammit.….

Hello!

I, too, was a johnny-​come-​lately to TRoS and a lurker at TRoS-​Fans! I had not been there for a long while, life being what it is, and was thus OVER­JOYED to receive Ian Plumb’s notice that this site — and this game — was set to go live! I have been spread­ing the word to my friends on Face­book, many of whom are gamers and read­ers of S&S (quite a few are also writ­ers and pub­lish­ers of the same).

My name, hand­ily enough, is Scott Oden. I’m the author of two small-​press nov­els of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion (MEN OF BRONZE and MEM­NON) and one novel of his­tor­i­cal sword-​and-​sorcery, 2010’s THE LION OF CAIRO from Thomas Dunne Books/​St. Martin’s Press. I’m cur­rently work­ing on my fourth novel, a fan­tasy fea­tur­ing a mix­ture of Orcs and Norse myth; its work­ing title is A GATH­ER­ING OF RAVENS. I have been gam­ing since 1978 or so, when a friend intro­duced me to the Holmes edi­tion of D&D.

I am very glad to be here!

Best,

Scott

Allan report­ing in.
I used to sell TROS back in the day when I had a gam­ing shop and always thought I would keep a copy for myself until the last one sold and then I found it was out of print. A while later I got a set from a Harn fan, and ran a Conan cam­paign. I am now marked by the TROS taint and find it hard to play old sytle games now.

Thanks for every­ones hard work.

Allan