Guide

The Forge: build your own life, then challenge your friends

Quidsmith Guides · Updated 2026-07-03 · 5 min read

Story Mode hands everyone the same start. The Forge hands you the controls: your age, salary, savings, debts, home and the whole economy. Play the life you build, then share it with friends to see if they can do better.

Start from a template

You never have to start from a blank form. Pick a template and change whatever you like:

• Story defaults: the Story Mode hand on Standard rules.
• Ironmum family: Ironmum's three children on the Story hand, ready to change.
• FIRE start: FIRE Mode's plan on the Story hand, so you can model your own early retirement.
• Even Keel: Standard rules, nothing extra. A clean test of skill.
• Everyman: you start with nothing and build it all from your salary.
• Randomman: your salary and savings are dealt at random. Play the hand you get.
• Stormy Markets: crashes come more often, cut deeper and take longer to recover.
• Inflation Nation: inflation shocks are on and volatile, so cash erodes fast.
• Crypto Winter: crypto collapses far more often.
• Iron Will: permadeath, forced interrupts and no rewinds.

These were the twists of the old Weekly Challenge. They live on here, where you can tune them.

Change anything

The Basic settings cover your life: starting age, cash, ISA, pension and investment pots, salary, rent or a home you already own, car, living costs, debt and when you stop working. Advanced opens the economy and the risks: how often markets crash and how deep, inflation, unexpected events, care costs, property and more. Every setting has an i marker explaining what it does, and the settings guide goes through each one.

Two more groups shape the life itself. Family plans children, childcare and leave. FIRE plan swaps a fixed retirement age for a Retire now button and the FI dashboard, with your own target spend, withdrawal rate, earliest retirement age and whether withdrawals happen automatically (see retiring early).

That makes The Forge a laboratory. Change one setting and replay to see exactly what it affects, stress-test a plan against a harsh economy before trusting it in Story Mode, or start someone near retirement to rehearse drawdown.

Play it solo

Anyone can open The Forge and try every setting. To play, sign in with a free account. If you build a setup first and then sign in, it is saved and waiting for you when you come back. Forge runs are your own experiments, so they count towards achievements but never towards the global hiscores.

Turn it into a room

Press Create room and your setup becomes a Forge room: everyone who joins plays the identical life, with the same starting position, the same economy and the same events, year for year. Because the world is fixed, nobody can blame the dice. The room ranks you on a private board that only its players can see.

Every free account can host one room at a time. Memberships support the game and raise that limit: a Supporter can host three rooms and a Patron ten. The host's membership also sets how many players a room holds: 5 for a free account, 25 for a Supporter and 100 for a Patron, host included. Joining someone else's room is always free.

Inviting friends

Every room has a short join code and an invite link. A friend who opens the link, or types the code, lands straight in the room, signing in first if they need to. When their run ends it submits itself to the room's board automatically.

Never pay-to-win

A membership buys hosting capacity, not an advantage. A Supporter and a free player in the same room play exactly the same life on exactly the same terms, and nothing in a room feeds the global hiscores.