🏴‍☠️ Avast, Sundered Isles on the Horizon!

Plus five new and upcoming solo game treasures and more

1. ⚓ Set Sail for Seafaring Solo Adventures

In Sundered Isles you will navigate a stormy sea of rebellion, empire, and arcane mysteries. Game illustration by Joshua Meehan.

This April, Game designer Shawn Tomkin is releasing Sundered Isles, a new solo and co-op RPG for running swashbuckling adventures on the perilous seas. It’s an expansion to his popular Ironsworn: Starforged.

What is the Ironsworn franchise?

• The franchise includes Shawn’s original dark fantasy game Ironsworn (available for free), its dungeon exploring expansion Delve, and the sci-fi themed Ironsworn: Starforged.

• The games emphasize storytelling and character development with innovative mechanics driving the narrative:

  • 🧑‍🦱 Assets: Characters are built using a combination of flexible assets which help define your character’s background and abilities.

  • 🤚 Vows: Characters make binding promises that form the core of their quests and help shape the story’s direction.

  • 🏃 Momentum system: This tracks successes over time as points that can be spent to overcome critical challenges.

  • 🌌 Customized worldbuilding: Players are given a rich backdrop for adventures which can be customized to create a personal seting.

What is Sundered Isles?

• Like Ironsworn and Starforged, Sundered Isles has the concept of vow-swearing adventurers and a sandbox setting that is largely created to your own preferences.

• You get two wirebound books with setting info, guidelines for ship and crew management, extensive worldbuilding tools, and a massive collection of system-agnostic generators and random tables for seafaring adventures.

• Sundered Isles is an expansion and requires Ironsworn: Starforged to play.

The Sundered Isles’ Kickstarter campaign ends Monday, April 4. Backers will get their digital copies later in the month.

2. 🦜 Interview with Designer Shawn Tomkin

Sundered Isles does not use AI-generated art. Its illustrations were created by artists using various techniques, including digital painting, photobashing, and 3D modeling.

Inspiration for Sundered Isles:

I’ve always loved nautical fiction and movies of all sorts, including the Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brien, the Black Sails television show, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films (the first three, anyway). I’ve never quite found a seafaring or pirate RPG that really worked for me, so this is my attempt at making a game I want to play.

Transitioning from sci-fi to age-of-sail setting:

Spacefaring — at least as it is represented in Starforged — is only a step removed from seafaring. So, it was more about adding a few new options and providing guidance than any sort of overhaul. I added simple mechanics for managing a crew, created a procedure for naval battles, added a new method of managing shipwide supply, and a few other bits to help immerse you in the challenges and opportunities of the setting. All of this is easily ported back to sci-fi campaigns. So you can, for example, have your own Star Trek-style bridge crew.

Favorite new features:

The cursed die is a standout for me. I love how it creates some tension when rolling on an oracle table, and allows you to customize your experience from gritty/historical to full-on eldritch horror. I’m also happy with the new guidance and tables for character downtime scenes, which will be a feature of Ironsworn games going forward.

Advice for aspiring creators:

Sundered Isles, like my other games, will offer a Creative Commons license. However, more broadly I would say that Sundered Isles represents how someone might use the Starforged engine for their own games and settings.

Future of Ironsworn:

I’d like to continue to support Starforged, perhaps with some smaller releases. I’m also in the early stages of planning a return to the Ironlands, the setting of the original Ironsworn game.

Go deeper:

• Get a free sample from the Sundered Isles guidebook

• Get a free Ironsworn: Starforged rules primer

• Video: Watch the best how-to-play for Ironsworn by The Bad Spot

• Podcast: Party of One’s March 14 episode features Jeff Stormer playing Starforged with the game’s artist Joshua Meehan.

3. New and upcoming solo and co-op games

• 👩‍🚀 Astroprisma is a solo RPG about exploring space hundreds of years after the collapse of the last galactic empire. You’ll discover planets and visit settlements, join or oppose different factions, and fight for humanity. I’m a sucker for its cool retro sci-fi and cyberpunk vibes. Kickstarter ends April 18.

• 🦑 When Nightmares Come is a solo and co-op miniatures skirmish wargame about investigating and battling supernatural mysteries of the modern world. The game blends quick combat with role-playing elements for varied missions and long-term campaign playability. Coming April 30 from Osprey Games and available for pre-order.

  

  Outsiders features illustrations by friend of The Soloist, Torben Boekemeyer.

• 🔫 Outsiders is a solo tabletop RPG about playing a bounty hunter on the galaxy’s edge. It’s a sequel/expansion to one of my favorite journaling RPGs, Notorious. Outsiders includes six new nomads, new factions, planets, and species, and a new “trilogy-mode” where you play through an epic three-part story that uses both books. It’s available now digitally but if you act quickly you can preorder a physical copy.

• ⚔️ Siege Perilous is a solo-first (but group-friendly) RPG game about Arthurian knights questing across England. You will travel through the life of your knight, following quests, fighting battles, making friends and enemies, and finding love. Designer Alan Bahr, best known for his TinyD6 games, calls it a game about loss, discovery, pursuing perfection and failing. Kickstarting through April 12.

• 📚 Mythic Magazine Compilation #4 is now available in a print edition at DriveThruRPG. This collection includes issues 19 to 24 with 12 articles including a system for crafting solo horror stories, a complete magic system for solo games, a system for generating events that build on each other, and a method for turning any movie or book into a solo adventure.

4. 🎲 Last Roll

• I had to back these mouth-watering minis. Gummyquest, Kickstarting through April, includes 150 fantasy gummies in 25 flavors. I went for the sugar-free add-on, but passed on getting my own molds (though it was tempting).

• Through March 31, Table Top Book Shelf is offering $5 off orders of two or more items from their solo and duet collection.