First #TabletopThursday post for 2025 - Tabletop Goals, ISC Content, etc.
Jeez. That sounds really weird. Off, even. 2025?
Yeah, we’ll all be scribbling the last number out on forms for the current date for a while. I know I will be, anyway.
Speaking of scribbling, numbers and all that caper…
I’ve got a frightening amount of content to manually re-enter and then reupload here from what was salvaged by the destruction of innerstrengthcheck.com (on New Year’s Eve, no less!).
That said, I don’t want everything posted here on the outset to be historical remnants. I’d like to keep things moving.
For those who are new arrivals to the Inner-Strength Check podcast, blog and website - you are warmly welcomed to a very geek-friendly space!
#tabletopthursdays began specifically enough as that - a hashtag on our social media for all things tabletop-RPG, board-gaming, wargaming and general hobby relevant materials. Thursday starting with a T was also some convenient alliteration.
More importantly, with the predominance of music as a theme on this site and the absolute unending glut of promotions, gigs and exciting music releases, it’s hard to work in another one of my big interests on a regular basis. Hence, I’m extremely lucky and grateful to have had RPG designer, GM, player-in-my-campaign-among-many-others and visual artiste Elodie Orlando join our intrepid small team late 2024.
I will be copying over and re-uploading both her initial introduction post, as well as her recent excellent review of Mobile Hut’s supplementary release The Choir, made for MORK BORG. Check back in on the blog later today/tonight (depending on where you’re at on the time-zone spectrum - hello from now or the future in GMT +10) for those posts, as well as some other RPG-related material that deserves another crack at Internet 3.0.
#NERDGOALS for 2025.
The aforementioned Nat-1 rendering of 4 years’ podcast/blog work has kind of clouded my perspective at the moment, admittedly.
However on reflection, I do have quite a few areas in the tabletop and board gaming space where I’d like to push forward and get some movement. Where I can find time amongst all the rest of life’s burdensome admin of course…
TABLETOP:
I have a larger-scale reflection/essay from 2024 with regards to my experiences as a tabletop GM and player respectively, but until then, I feel these are my main aims for 2024 in this area:
FORBIDDEN LANDS (Campaign - as Game-Master):
Hopefully pick up and continue with the gang for our adventures in the Ravenlands. (I’ll be doing a more comprehensive review of this amazing system from Free League in the near future. Stay tuned!)
Actually finish reading The Raven’s Purge good and proper so those additional site/campaign elements can mince into the big kitchen-sink open-world sandbox I’ve got brewing. I really appreciate the fact that TRP, like all the other main ‘campaign’ supplments for FL are VERY modular, pick-and-choose, and aren’t linear in nature unless desired. It reflects the open-ended, low-prep accessible factor that helps 1. my preference for Kenshi-coded, stuff-around-and-find-out emergent sandbox play and 2. the way my non-linear, very not-logic-oriented neurodivergent brain works.
Right now? Admittedly, with so many months/years of progressively worsening burnout, reading anything has become much more difficult. But, in my overall aim to spend less time on social media and more time unplugged, taking some extra time to grab some books, kick back and gorge on TTRPG settings to get the idea-machine/escapism whirring up again sounds nice. Especially during summer down here in Victoria, where the days feel Scandinavian-length (love it!)
To that end, I’d like to really chew on a bunch of the supplements and materials for Forbidden Lands that have sadly gathered dust on my IKEA Shelf of Please Play/Read Us.
Do yourself a favour. Go check out Forbidden Lands. It’s no secret to anyone who knows me just how much more of a sci-fi buff I am than a fantasy lover - but for the excellent now-multi-year 5e campaign I’ve been in as a player, Forbidden Lands, and Five Leagues from the Borderlands, I make huge exceptions!
Speaking of - I’ve actually used the hex-map for Forbidden Lands and some of the setting as the basis for my minis-agnostic-wargame-meets-procgen-party-RPG Five Leagues. That I can remember (another hobby fallen to the wayside of burnout, mental health etc), it worked an absolute treat. Consider that yet another flag for a future episode/s too!
2. SOLO ROLEPLAYING:
Overall, though - one area of tabletop roleplaying that I aimed for last year and really faltered in after a point (alongside everything else - thanks depression - story for another time) was solo roleplaying. I deliberately set the wonderful deck of cards, reference and core book for the incredible solo/co-op/with-DM-able title Starforged. Yeah, that went nowhere, lol. [sad dice clattering]
Shawn Tomkin is kicking all sorts of ass in the solo roleplaying space. Go check his stuff out HERE - you can access a whole heap of these titles for free in digital form.
Give it a go and report back to us how you found it!
I had recently ‘started’ a new solo campaign though, and although I mostly wanted to use that as an analog activity, I cannot pass up great community tools like Stargazer, which helped immensely.
If you run Starforged or Ironsworn for a group/are playing co-op or even just trying it solo, I cannot emphasise enough what a great resource it can be for your games!
Preview of my character, Sanjay Primaron. Stargazer was created by Nick Boughton, and works for both Starforged and Ironsworn nicely. Check out /r/ironsworn on Reddit, join the Discord server and chuck Nick a thanks if you enjoy it!
Speaking of Stargazer… the whole reason I used the app in the first place is ‘cause I was like ‘dude, I LOVE that band!’. Here’s some incredible spacey sci-fi black metal from right here Down Under.
Chuck it on during a SF sesh and get into the vibe proper:
Sorry nerds - can’t not sneak in at least some metal, even for #TabletopThursdays.
As much as I don’t want to make my leisure into commodification/just to repurpose for The Almighty Algorithm, I do have some narrative audio-drama ideas in mind should something of substance come from the campaign play itself. Which it damn well will, ‘cause SF never ceases to surprise me with how much expansion and immersion can effectively come from book-as-Dungeon-Master.
Similarly - the aforementioned Five Leagues From The Borderlands by equally impressive and incredibly prolific creator Nordic Weasel Games (go check out his plethora, and I MEAN plethora, of tabletop RPG content here). Where Starforged has a lot more deliberate flexibility and lack of rule-clarifications to support the RP side, Five Leagues is something akin to a choose-your-own-settings-and-minis tactical RPG video game… in book form.
There’s no shortage of events, tables, emergent threads and questlines in each of his books, however. And if we’re talking accessibility - as someone who enjoys a bit of crunch but whom possesses a very dyscalculic, maths-allergic brain, I really appreciate the simple but well-thought-out 1d6 system. It’s Darkest Dungeon in aesthetic - and difficulty. Really, really fun and can be played with almost anything you have lying around the house or heck, even on a piece of paper or notes app.
To whittle this waffle down into some actual listed goals, for both systems:
Starforged: Pick up the campaign where I left it, and see where Sanjay’s distraction-riddled interaction with a scrap merchant takes him so that he can figure out exactly what the heck is going on in the Sector he’s found himself in the Forge’s Expanse region.
ISC - Most definitely aiming for a review of the system/mechanics at minimum. If the adventures of Sanjay are amenable to it, I also want to make a podcast episode+ with some narrative flair/audio-drama styled recap for you guys.
Five Leagues: actually finish the bloody campaign! And by bloody, I mean it - everyone bar one character is currently dead so uh, yeah. I better get to hiring some Followers and maybe taking on some less ruthless jobs from the local town’s populace next time.
ISC - Review and mechanics discussion, plus a recap of my solo campaign in this system. As per Starforged and time/energy/capacity pending, mayhaps also a separate audio-drama for the podcast.
I have more sneaky-stuff content that I’m sitting on, too, but that’s all dependent on how this site-transfer drama/workload goes at the mo-mo. More on that later. Time to actually exhale and quit digitally yapping my chops.
So this isn’t all just me-me-me, I approached our comrade Elodie and asked her about any rough ideas for things on their horizon for 2025.
To quote our esteemed tabletop writer:
“I want to push my stamina as GM (long sessions or medium campaigns with emotional stakes).
I want to get back into design (both RPGs and modules).
I want to reconnect with the OSR/indie scene.”
NICE. Nicely said, fam.
That’s freaking awesome, dude.
Broken record (on the old site, and socials, and to the group chat/DMs), but I truly appreciate having someone onboard with us who has industry backing and experience.
Means you’ll get a lot of additional insight and perspective often not available via the usual DM/player lenses. Not to say those aren’t valid; heck, if anything they’ll form the majority of our content and collaborations here ‘cause funnily enough, that’s where the hobby exists in media res (bad RPG neckbeard pun?).
In terms of specific titles, Elodie has a particular genre in mind. A rad genre experiencing massive indie-scene exponential growth, I might add.
“To be honest, my most burning desire right now is to run an OSR dungeon crawl. But whether that will be in MÖRK BORG, Knave, Old-School Essentials or even Mothership depends entirely on which way the crowd twists my arm!”
Coincidentally, all those titles kick serious butt.
Don’t believe me?
Go check out doom-metal-inspired grimdark brutaliser MÖRK BORG right here, courtesy of the infallible Swedes over at Free League Publishing.
To quote the publishers:
‘MÖRK BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world.’
As for similarly-esteemed title Knave, by equally commended publishers in Questing Beast, here’s just one of many examples of high praise for the classless OSR classic:
““Knave is a stark seven pages of incredibly thought-out, innovative, and compact game design, punctuated by random tables and spells that show off an amazing creative flair . . . If I were asked to run a game completely by the seat of my pants, Knave would be my go-to game.” - ”
Peep yourself a slice of this RPG over at itch.io, but more importantly be sure to drop into the Knave subreddit which is veritably teeming with fantastic homebrew community content!
Likewise, Old-School Essentials is both an excellent standalone product but also expands into an entire universe of supplements, 3rd party modules and other old-school dungeon-crawling tasty treats.
Fitting as much in with the others in the metal-as-fuck theme, OSE was developed by a publisher with a name that’d easily slot onto a grindcore bill in Necrotic Gnome. Go grab yourself a slice of the OSE world and get slaying, starting right here!
Quoth the Gnome of Necrosis:
“Light, easily modified rules put the focus of play on shared imagination, improvisation, and fun. Modern formatting and layout make the game easy to learn and easy to reference during play. Durable, deluxe quality hardcover books are filled with evocative, old-school art. What’s more, Old-School Essentials is 100% compatible with the classic Basic/Expert game from 1981, meaning that decades of adventure are at your fingertips!”
Mothership?!
Jesus Christ, dude. That deserves it’s own entire self-contained post.
My roleplay-gamer-in-Christ, just go peep this incredible retrotech phantasm of sci-fi horror. Do it. It’s RIGHT BEHIND YOU! LOOK! HERE!
Props to Tuesday Knight Games for the 2nd edition boxset, which both Elodie and myself are absolutely chomping at the bit to run this year!
Like, dude. Just look at the damn boxset below:
Image Credit: Reddit user Soulpatch77. Relevant post here.
Stay tuned, keep those d20’s handy. We’ve got a LOT of geekdom content for you here at Inner-Strength Check for 2025!
Until next time… Peace, Love and Grindcore xoxo - Brady.