[ISC Update] A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Team Member, Elodie!
Note: If you’re only just jumping onto our site for the first time, please note this post was originally published on our prior website, which died an untimely death right on NYE 2024 (RIP).
Please feel free to peruse the site and check out Elodie’s more recent writings, many of which you’ll under the Tabletop category in our blog!
Since the time of writing this article, we’ve had multiple new members join our team, and been involved with a lot of exciting new content. If you’re a return customer, welcome back and enjoy our thankfully-ongoing journey!
Peace, Love, Grindcore and Dice Rolls xoxo - Brady.
I've been sitting on this reveal for a hot minute, but I feel that now's the time!
Complementing the stellar and talented additions to my humble podcast and blog in co-contributors Mal Montisanti and Hamza Siddiqi, I'd like to introduce our newest addition to the ISC crew in Elodie Orlando.
Before I showcase some of Elodie's many talents and discuss tentative plans about her input for the ISC project, a little backstory on how the two of us met.
A few years ago, right on the fresh hangover of seemingly-perpetual lockdowns in Melbourne in the early 2020's, I placed a callout locally for players interested in joining a sandbox campaign of Free League's Mutant Year Zero, a system on which their fantastic Year Zero Engine has been based and adapted to further titles.
At the time, we'd had some shifts and movement in players due to life circumstances, and our person in question responded to my request on socials. Elodie joined a pre-existing campaign with no friction and was a welcome addition to my zany post-apocalyptic capers in alt-history irradiated Berlin!
Proving herself a great collaborator with the party both in-character and above-table as a warm and friendly player in our group, over time I came to learn of her exploits in multiple creative ventures. As time went on, introductions were also made between myself and a fellow contributor to the Game Therapy Australia Network, with Elodie making herself readily available to provide game therapy services to a happy clientele.
As someone with an air of sincere humility, I'm going to completely circumvent that and use this post as a showcase of her objectively skilled and talented creative craft in visual arts, tabletop roleplaying and more.
Elodie identifies as she/they, and is a member of the LGBTIQ community as transgender. And while I can already hear the groans and pre-emptive shrugs of tokenism, culture-wars or whatever bullshit preconceptions you may have about this being mentioned, the actual reality is it's not something that factors into any special consideration where the blog is concerned, nor our relationship as friends.
What this does mean, however, is that we have an intersectional lens in our ongoing discourse that comes from a place of lived experience and peer identity in this space. If you've got an issue with that, there's the door. Gender and sexual diversity are objectively just facts and represent the normal diverse range of human identity. 'nuff said, really.
I'll let wise Nova Scotian sage Ricky provide the ultimate response to any umbrage you may have in this regard:
Elodie brings an interesting an eclectic mix of experience to the table at ISC - from her university studies in the natural sciences to involvement in human services work via the above Game Therapy initiative, Elodie is one similar to Hamza, Mal and myself at the end of the day. That is, someone with passionate breadth and depth of interest in interesting and niche spaces, both as a content-creator and a hobbyist herself.
For instance, Elodie has continued on with our intrepid tabletop crew for fortnightly games under my not-that-watchful ADHD GM eye, having played through my first ever successful completion of a long-form sandbox campaign in MYZ. From there, we've also played through the Destroyer of Worlds mini-campaign for the Alien RPG (Rest in Peace Everyone - TPK baby!) and a very brief, ill-fated run-in with a Facehugger, for the same title.
Since then, Elodie has ventured alongside myself and the group into another first for me - venturing into the genre of fantasy (well, grimdark fantasy really) in the wonderful Forbidden Lands campaign. We've been on that journey together for.... heck, nearly 18 months?
In both cases, the fact that Elodie has been a pleasure to have as a player and wonderfully creative with her character builds, roleplay etc surely factors in to the longevity of both campaigns - something infamously rare in the tabletop RPG space.
Now, a look at her creative portfolio.
Elodie provides fee-for-service commission based artistry, with a detailed ink-and-parchment flavour that conjures up all sorts of OG DnD/fantasy escapist vibes. She'll often share drawings and caricatures drawn on the fly in-session that put anything I've ever scribbled to shame in a handbasket, lol.
From the official website of her portfolio, Into The Weird Blue Yonder, here's a couple of samples she's provided re: prior commissions.
Elodie's contributions to the artistic community don't stop at drawings, and they aren't just confined to individual pieces, either.
She has provided flavourful and detailed artistic input for a range of tabletop roleplaying projects, such as:
Among many others!
Like myself, Elodie is passionate about the growth and development of the burgeoning grassroots independent publisher scene in the tabletop RPG/hobby space.
Unlike myself, Elodie has actually gone and done something about this. Not only in her above contributions, but also her own self-published tabletop RPG supplements, complemented with her own artistic flair.
As an aficionado of the critically-acclaimed OSR RPG Knave, Elodie has written and designed two kick-ass supplements for the system in Fire and Stone, and Cult of The Sky Titans. Both have received high praise from the community and with good cause. I mean, c'mon, this:
Identifying as neurodivergent, Elodie and I share a lot of the chaotic blends of endless passion/thirst for our interests and an endless, stream-of-consciousness inner monologue of brain-need-dopamine pokes and prods towards novel and interesting ideas, concepts and projects.
We both share a sense of justice-orientation around empowerment of disadvantaged communities IRL, but also a deep interest in promotion of the independent hobbyist and creative industries.
To this end, it's been a relief to have her welcomed aboard the team. In honesty, the veritable and relentless flood of fantastic music-focused content (Elodie also shares an appreciation of the musical arts, although probably isn't as much of an extreme-metal brute as myself!) has seen my intentions to promote more tabletop RPG, visual arts and hobbyist content on this platform be somewhat waylaid.
To this end, you can honestly consider Elodie our resident tabletop 'expert'. (Elodie - shoosh, c'mon, it's true lol). Bringing her lived experience as a player, artist and and person alongside clearly professional and high-quality output adds a much-welcomed broadening of our topic scope.
Elodie, like myself, has plans for also bringing many themes and topics to the table where hobbies are concerned. Preliminary thoughts are around a raft of content including reviews, mini-reviews, reflections on experiences as player/GM/artist/creative professional, discussing some discursive and social themes of the hobby community more broadly, and some more personal reflections on how her passions have resulted in personal growth and improved wellbeing.
A final announcement - I have also commissioned for Elodie to design our new InnerStrengthCheck logo! Handing her the typical Brady-coded pastiche of disparate concepts mashed into one, she's nonetheless been keen to take this on, which is greatly appreciated by myself.
Tabletop punk-rock from a champ of the DIY creative scene. Welcome, Elodie, to the team.
