And another one—we are simultaneously working on developing The Sometimes Kingdom RPG, the medieval horror game Danse Macabre (coming out this year!), and a new, comic book-sized quickstart + full venture for the infamous political/sci-fi TTRPG, Stillfleet!

• Teaser on Itch.io – https://stillfleet.itch.io/enter
• News post on Itch.io – https://itch.io/t/4565475/new-stillfleet-quickstart-by-comic-book-artist
• Follow the campaign on BackerKit – https://stillfleet.com/enter

It's a satirical, cartoon-show, super-future, easy-to-learn, all-in-one adventure + rules set

We're working on a big relaunch of the infamous sci-fi political TTRPG, Stillfleet. In the meantime, we've collaborated with cartoon and comic artist/designer Michael Cohen to bring to life his vision for an extra-zany, Saturday-morning introduction to the game.

It's still the epic far-future game we released a few years back (with major thanks going to Fun City Ventures!)—but this time, it's also a retro-nostalgic and color-shifted back into 1991.

Learn more ahead of the book's release >

Pick up the FREE TEASER on Itch.io to get a good luck at Michael's art and some of the content in the full book, which will be ~64 pages and fully illustrated.   

Free teaser on Itch.io >

The full book features 4 unique pregens, 4 full encounters (plus smaller random-encounter statblocks), 8 "playsets" within a floating techno-castle mega-dungeon, tons of wacky NPCs, a cult (of course), lots of archaetech to hack/steal/run away from, and of course maps and sidebars tying this venture back to Official Lore by the game's creator, Wythe Marschall.

Follow the campaign on BackerKit for updates >

Don't miss out! Enter the Nostalgitron and Get Ripped today!

Play a fantasy game where *everyone* can cast spells

From the mind of artist, writer, and puppet-designer Ethan Gould comes The Sometimes Kingdom RPG—the PWYW/free playtest version of the latest Grit System game from the Stillfleet Studio (the creators of Stillfleet, Blister Critters, and Danse Macabre).

In The Sometimes Kingdom RPG, contractor–Adventurers take on the petty problems of Seasons' Keep, a climate-disrupted world brought to vivid, exploration-ready life through Gould's art and the Stillfleet Studio's famously flexible/player-empowering Grit System. This high-fantasy/portal-fantasy RPG adds new mechanics to the system, including a new and powerful system for forging any spell you can imagine!

Check out the PWYW Early Access Rulebook today!

Also, did we mention the art? It's bonkers: hand-drawn, piled on top of itself, multimedia, inspired by retro video games and art history—you just have to check it out. Maybe start with our streamlined character creation flow: The Sometimes Kingdom RPG inverts traditional dragon-game expectations and encourages you to play a Skeleton Driver with a magic car, a FaE Knight, or a Talking Animal Alienist (magical psychologist, mind witch).

Plus we're playtesting the game now and periodically adding more chapters. Join us in our quest to make the most fun, radically vitalist fantasy game we can!

If you like classic fantasy tropes but are searching for a different, modern, innovative, inclusive way to enjoy them, then check out The Sometimes Kingdom RPG and get in touch. We really value playtesting, and we can't wait to learn what our fellow Adventurers discover as they explore Seasons' Keep, where the seasons are fixed and the magical societies defined by them are ever-evolving in the face of disruptions to magic due to Earth's technological influence…

Get your copy of The Sometimes Kingdom RPG while it's still PWYW!

Yes, we do have rules for opossums as Critters!

You can also easily adapt any animal into a Critter by selecting its type (Fuzzy, Feathery, Scaly, Warted, Shelled, or Crawly) and then mixing and matching the ~200 animal talents (Critter powers) in the full rulebook. Every Critter gets 2 animal talents.

In terms of adapting Blister Critters to a pre-/non-apocalyptic setting, that's also easy: just describe the world differently! Perhaps humans exist, and your Critters are simply living apart from them. Perhaps the Critters are escaped test subjects from a secret lab, which is why they are intelligent and have powers…

The one thing to keep in mind is, in our canonical setting, there are no humans, so we don't have rules for them, only animals. But you can just give them high scores and assume they're generally in charge, pre-Poof (pre-apocalypse), and everything else works.

Ah, dang, great minds! We are not affiliated with Mythopoetic. Thanks for letting us know about their game. Our game does not feature faeries but does feature a mutant apocalypse. Their game looks cool, too, FWIW!

Love these ideas! I think we aren't doing fantastical Critters ourselves, although we encourage the community to use the game however they want. I know we have more aquatic and mini-big-animal Critters. And playing as Bliffs… I can't say much more than—stay tuned! More rules are currently in development. If you want to playtest some, check out our Discord server.

Just a generic snake! We looked at hundreds and hundreds of animals and realized, we can't fit them all in the Rulebook! So the Rulebook features many options, and later supplements will feature many more.

Hopefully it's clear how to build your own animals (each gets two powers and sits in one of six categories based on the type of body plan they have).

Please feel free to let us know what animals you'd like to see in future Blister Critters supplements—and thanks so much for supporting the game!

I haven't figured out the trashposting mechanic yet, but—

Battlefellaz: RUBICON is a fully playable, fun, one-sheet (front/back), PWYW tabletop roleplaying game about fighting fascism. The game uses the Grit System (which powers Stillfleet, Blister Critters, and Danse Macabre): your scores are dice, and you burn a resource called grit (GRT) in order to use powers.

In this version, your pool of GRT is a deck of cards, which you discard as you use powers or take damage. Who knows—could be fun!

Note: this game is expressly political, though it's also a silly way to blow off steam. I play to run some sessions this fall if anyone is interested. Can we built solidarity through tabletop games? Let's find out!

Please check out Battlefellaz today!

Here's an image of the logo for the system, to satisfy the one-image minimum for this thread:

Happy birthday, Hodag!

Medieval horror roleplaying

In Danse Macabre by Christopher Pickett and the Stillfleet Studio, you play a Pilgrim, a conscripted peasant, sentenced to traverse the wilderness in pursuit of quintessence—the sole remedy against the curse of undeath. Because in the twilight of the 14th century, death is no longer final: those who die are miraculously and terribly revived, each time with new maleficia—mutations of both the spirit and the flesh.

Danse Macabre: Prima Mors includes a full early version of the game, which is currently in development and being actively playtested. Prima Mors is 64 pages long and features:

• Complete rules
• 6 backgrounds (classes, including Archer, Mendicant, and more)
• 20 maleficia (wild body-horror mutations)
• Full lists of equipment (weapons, armor, useful medieval travel gear
• A beautiful written introduction to the game-world (which is a twisted shadow of our own in 1390 CE)
• An introductory quest
• An ornamental character sheet
• Amazing art (all #HumanMade by the author!)

Danse Macabre uses the highly adaptable Grit System, which was created by Wythe Marschall and also powers the successfully Kickstarted TTRPGs Stillfleet and Blister Critters. The Grit System’s mechanics are simple (your scores are dice) and narrative-focused (powers just happen, leading to epic moments).

It's super fun! And this is only the early access version (though 64 pages!).

You won the Critter City Crawl Jam 2024! Since I can't DM you on Itch, can we chat on Discord? Link to our server: discord.stillfleet.com.

Thanks for the quick reply! That completely makes sense. Thanks for supporting other human-made game designers by sharing your work under this license!

These are so cool! To clarify, the license allows for commercial work as long as it's human-made and credits you? Or is the license for non-commercial work? All good either way. Really dig your style!

This is just a quick thank-you. We really appreciate how many people jumped into this jam for a brand-new game, and the submissions look rad! Tony and Wythe are reading/enjoying them this week. We hope to have updates soon.

Super excited to get the book and use it in our Blister Critters games! Great work!

Hi there, great question! I think in the interest of fairness, we'll choose all different people to feature in the PDF, no repeats. But please feel free to submit more than one location! It's a whole city, after all, so there are plenty of places to write about.

Good luck! Can't wait!

Absolutely beautiful book.

Hi all, just a quick update: we are keeping the jam going for a couple of weeks, since there's clearly interest! Thanks so much to everyone who is thinking about submitting a location for Blister Critters.

Create a location for all Critters to explore—and compete for a free Blister Critters Boxed Set!

The creators of Blister Critters (Odd Gob Games and the Stillfleet Studio) are hosting the first-ever jam for this new and very fun mutant cartoon animal TTRPG! Create a quick location to expand the zany world of the game and share it with the community.

Join the Critter City Crawl!

The creator of the top entry will win a free copy of the Blister Critters Boxed Set (launching February 6 on Kickstarter), and the top 5 entries will be bundled in a free PDF of Blister Critters settings here on Itch.

(Deets: the judges are the game's creators. All entries remain the IP of their creators. This is just for fun, for us!)

About Blister Critters

In this innovative and surreal game, you play as a small animal who can wield bizarre mutations called Blisters as well as physics-bending Nonsense powers. These strange abilities—artfully developed within the Grit System—will help you survive in a vast, cruel suburbia populated by fellow Critters and their feral counterparts, Beasts.

Luckily, the humans left behind a near infinite amount of Stuff—yes, that's the game term!—for you to arm yourself with, trade, or hack apart and reassemble using Blister Critters’ simple crafting rules. (Just watch out for self-aware Blistered Stuff, AKA Bliffs…)

The Blister Critters Quickstart contains everything you need to play. But remember, it's only a preview! The full rulebook will feature 100 pages of mayhem, including:

• 6 Critter categories consisting of 66 different animals
• 4 Blister paths full of dozens of mutant powers and cartoon-logic Nonsense powers
• 10 cartoon Roles to play in your party
• A new take on the Grit System, which takes only minutes to learn and naturally facilitates memorable story beats
• Simple narrative rules for Catchphrases, Ad-Libs, and other cartoon-show fun

Get the Blister Critters Quickstart!

Join the Critter City Crawl jam!

An offer far too interesting to turn down…

For the latest mini-venture (ready-to-play story) for the TTRPG Stillfleet, writer and editor Stephen Aubrey has whipped up a wonderful heist story set on Spindle, the game's iconic alien space station. Do you dare take an off-the-books job for the Wetan Mafia? Why would you really want to disturb the peaceful meditations of the Acolytes of Infinite Resignation (one of whom is pictured below)? What is the Anti-Groober!?

Find out in "The Monkey in the Wrench"—featuring a very weird piece of archaetech, new encounters, a hex map (yes!), new rules for heist perks, rules and other ideas for tactical room-blob-crawls, and of course plenty of Wetan Mafia lore.

Get the mini-venture for only three bucks, and start playing Stillfleet today!

This game looks amazing! Do you have any plans to publish translations/localizations?

New book, new rules, new cold war in space…

The Stillfleet Studio just released QADIDA ☉ SPY PLANET by Ian Derk (with writing by Wythe Marschall) as a high-quality PDF on Itch. Get the book today for 4 new playable classes of spy-themed voidminer, 4 new playable species, an entire new advanced powers list, dozens of factions (with faction hustles), full ventures to run, a haunted DMZ,  spy tech, loads of random tables, memorable NPCs, and maps! (The maps come with the PDF as full-res files.)

Qadida has extended Stillfleet in a number of ways—mechanically and narratively—and we're proud of the result. If you like spy stories, urban settings, and/or the alien-cosmopolitical vibe of Le Carre-meets-Naked Lunch, you'll find Qadida useful in running Grit System games.

Also, you'll get page after page of new illustrations by Ethan Gouldini! Check out this menshee (fungus-cat):

Here is the Collective Agora in Free Qadida (the anarcho-socialist half of the domed city):

Or meet O.O.M. (Old Office Max), a sapient fax machine-mafioso:

Get Qadida today—and please leave a positive comment and review if you like it!

Thanks, Zac! We love playing with you.

Thanks so much! We're so excited to add to it and get it into the world. (Writing about squirrel legionaries and TV-host centipedes right now...)

So glad to hear it! FYI, you can generally find friendly players and GMs (including the game's creators!) on our Discord server, if you're open to a virtual game: http://discord.stillfleet.com/

Animals. Mutants. Simple, intuitive rules.
A vast, post-human suburbia to explore...

The Stillfleet Studio's Grit System is expanding with Blister Critters, a new game by Anthony Grasso (concept, writing, art, and design), co-developed by Wythe Marschall (mechanics, editing). Play as a pack of Critters—Saturday-morning heroes navigating a world without humans that is filled with Beasts (solitary, large, dangerous animals) and Bliffs (Blistered Stuff, or synthetic objects given cartoon life by the mutating environment). It's a fast-to-learn, collaboration-focused TTRPG from an innovative indie creator. Plus, the Quickstart is free!

Sink your teeth and claws into the PWYW Blister Critters Quickstart!

You have to love Tony's unique art style, from his warm palette to his command of animal expressions and group vibes:

The game allows for both "zany" play—focused on cartoon-show antics—as well as "gnarly" play, focused on a world after humans (and during an ongoing and all-too-real climate catastrophe). Plus, there are new-to-the-Grit-System rules for worldbuilding with mad-libs, collectively mapping (human-scale) rooms, and even gaining advantage from uttering pithy cartoon catchphrases!

The full book (already written, being design) will feature dozens of mutant "Blister" and "Nonsense" powers, hundreds of examples of mechanicalized human-made "Stuff" (a game term), and 66 different intelligent animals to choose from (or make your own!).

For now, pick up the free Quickstart, make a Critter or use a pregenerated character, and dive into the familiar-feeling but truly unique new world of Blister Critters!

From the combined brainpower of Borough Bound and the Stillfleet Studio, this standalone fantasy-horror venture, originally written and illustrated by Borough Bound, is the first non-science fiction module using the Stillfleet Studio’s hallmark Grit System.

The concept is simple: a roguelike/roguelite run through a haunted town broken up into three “stages.” Every night, you awaken, alive; every night, you die—until you either discover the secret of the Barrow Lords or finally waste away. There is no escape.

Download the full pay-what-you-want venture, including nine pre-generated characters! This is a great introduction to the Grit System that underpins Stillfleet, and to the endlessly inventive worldbuilding of the Borough Bound team.

If you run this action-packed macabre story at your table, please tell us what you think over on the Stillfleet Discord server.

Most art and cover design by Borough Bound. Some art and Grit System layout by the Stillfleet Studio.

Thanks, I think you're right. It's clearly counting markup. In order to make the needed changes, I cut some words and, using a character counter, confirmed that the entire markup character count was under 5000. Still didn't work, same error. I cut more and more, and eventually it updated. This seemed to have nothing to do with images, in my case, and the actual count was closer to 4000 than 5000. It must be counting characters that I can't see, somewhere.

Random unsolicited advice to Itch: please post the rules somewhere. How many characters do we get on our profile? (Forgive me if this is posted somewhere. I looked but couldn't find it.)

Anyway, crisis averted, for now! Best of luck, Gendgi, with uploading your images.

I want to refresh my profile, but I keep getting an error that reads:

• profile: expected empty, or text between 1 and 5000 characters

What does this mean? The entire profile is fewer than 5000 characters... Any ideas as to what to do? Is Itch counting characters in HTML?

Right, sorry, moving too fast. Followed!

Hey, we're happy to send you the full venture. Looks like your DMs aren't open on Twitter, though... Is there an email we should use?

Much-loved early playtest ventures for the new sci-fi RPG Stillfleet come to Itch!

In addition to the official mini-ventures—the illustrated, fully designed short introductions to Stillfleet—we are also proud to bring to Itch some early ventures that have been thoroughly playtested but not yet illustrated or laid out. We've spiced these up by also including a couple of our illustrated encounter cards, which provide quick reference stats from the Stillfleet Core Rulebook.

1. The Bounty of Trymagont 1AT ☉ EARLY ACCESS – A mystery aboard a Late Tephnian mining facility on a sinking moon: what—or whom—will the voidminers discover in the little time they have? This 15-page science-horror venture can be used as an introduction to Stillfleet or as a story in the middle of an ongoing campaign. It focuses on a hulk (an empty space station) and is intended to be run in a single session.
2. The Dheleb Cross ☉ EARLY ACCESS – "The Dheleb Cross" is a hulk-tastic short venture that is highly philosophical and melancholy in tone and introduces players to the physics-breaking wilderness of the Escheresque. This 12-page philosophical science-horror venture can be used as an introduction to Stillfleet or as a story in the middle of an ongoing campaign.

We are very excited to offer these stories with the wonderful Itch.io community. If you enjoy short adventure content for your sci-fi TTRPGs, please check us out and consider leaving a positive review. If you have an idea for a mini-venture, get in touch with us on the Stillfleet Discord.

We’re excited to publish the official Stillfleet mini-ventures on Itch.io! Get started playing the best weird–political sci-fi TTRPG today!

Check out all of the mini-ventures here: https://itch.io/c/3322404/stillfleet-mini-ventures

Mini-ventures offer different ways to play the game by exploring a range of genres, and they're written by different game designers. For the designed ones—the official MVR series—we’re publishing the full versions so that non-upper-tier-patrons can get all of the content contained in these stories. What's on Itch so far:

1. MVR002 ☉ Motes in the Eye – This spider-filled mini-venture "Motes in the Eye"—is a gem. It both draws on and adds to the book-length venture The Rain Thieves by Aaron H. This playable scenario features new art by Ethan Gould, Radanaar map by Aaron H., layout and 3D design by Sunaree Paiwong, and additional writing by Wythe Marschall.
2. MVR003 ☉ The Nocturnal Lights – A sci-fi detective homage, originally written for spooky season 2022. Inspired by everyone's favorite 1990s show about paranormal investigations, "The Nocturnal Lights"—our third official mini-venture (MV), written by our editor, Stephen Aubrey—sends the voidminers to a remote rock to check out rumors of a mysterious visitation… Also, there are lots of jalasti around.
3. MVR004 ☉ The Voice Beneath the Meer – Our fourth official mini-venture (MV)—the fully designed, map-driven “The Voice Beneath the Meer”—takes the voidminers to a sleepy/swampy county on the medieval province of Pays, where something odd is stirring beside the great Mukoth Meer…
4. MVR005 ☉ The Sphere of [REDACTED] – This mini-venture offers several encounters, a group of shadow-PCs, a ship map courtesy Hyperdrive Fleet, and two full-page maps of the Stillfleet game-cosmos: the central continent of Kaku on the populous medieval-tech world of Kakudun, and the bustling port city of Graafa (as explored by the crew of Float City!). You won’t want to miss “The Sphere of [REDACTED].” Major thanks to Leonardo Andrade for writing it.

We are very excited to offer these stories with the wonderful Itch.io community. If you enjoy short adventure content for your sci-fi TTRPGs, please check us out and consider leaving a positive review. If you have an idea for a mini-venture, get in touch with us on the Stillfleet Discord.

Right, sorry, we were wondering about that: what account/s should I send a download key to?

If you're looking for short, introductory Stillfleet material, check out our mini-ventures, now available on Itch! Mini-ventures offer different ways to play the game by exploring a range of genres, and they're written by different game designers. If you have an idea for a mini-venture, get in touch with us on the Stillfleet Discord.

The second venture for the new sci-fi TTRPG Stillfleet is not only a playable scenario, but an entire sourcebook for exploring the harsh desert world of Radanaar. Introducing, The Rain Thieves.

Written by Stillfleet Studio's banshee (technologist), Aaron H., The Rain Thieves is a 100-page (pun-intended) sandbox story and setting that can be used for a one-off venture or an entire campaign. At a glance:

• An eco-political story (will the players destabilize a fragile ecosystem on the promise of helping other worlds, later?)
• Whole new rules to emphasize the struggle for survival in extreme rock-side environments
• New encounters—including the fearsome tank-bug xiphosome and even an agent of H.Co.
• Many new archaetech and Spinside items
• New NPCs, locations, settings, and of course weird foods

Here are just a few images by Ethan Gould from the book, which is full of original art by the entire Stillfleet Studio, maps, and graphic design by Sunaree Paiwong:

After years of playtesting, three years of product development, and a successful Kickstarter, the full rules for the indie sci-fi TTRPG Stillfleet are now available as a 352-page, full-color, professionally designed PDF on Itch.

Stillfleet combines a totally new, easy-to-learn, endlessly flexible rules system with a dark, zany, and politically rich game world. This combination delivers a unique gaming experience as heard on the popular real-play podcast Fun City.

At a glance:

• Characters' scores are dice
• There are only 5 base scores plus health and a flexible pool of points called grit
• Player characters are "voidminers" who work for the venal Worshipful Company (the Co.) retrieving advanced "archaetech" from ruined hulks across the void
• There are many playable classes and many species from across many worlds, with guidelines for designing your own
• There are hundreds of powers—many of which just work, without rolls—including memorable nanotech "blooder" powers and the six paths of the psychic, spell-like "hell science"
• The game's vibe is equal parts espionage/cyberpunk/space-politics and OSR/exploration/alien encounter
• If you dig the core rules, there are already several other Stillfleet books out, with more currently in the works
• Digital tools for the game are available here, with updates coming frequently
• The game design team is active on Discord, Patreon, and elsewhere
• The Co. is the ultimate villain!

Here are just a few pages from the book, which features literally hundreds of illustrations by lead artist Ethan Gould as well as an amazing team of freelancers (not to mention the gorgeous graphic design by Erich Lazar and Sunaree Paiwong):

Download the PTBR QSR here (pay-what-you-want) >

Thanks to the brilliant work of writer, game designer, editor, and translator Leonardo Andrade, Stillfleet, the new sci-fi game heard on the podcast Fun City is available in PTBR!

☉

About the game: Stillfleet is a new tabletop roleplaying game (RPG) about exploring ruined spacecraft—hulks—and habitable earth-like planets, cut off from contact with Terra for decades or centuries—rocks. Spaceships are dungeons, hanging in the dark…

Players take the roles of "voidminers"—explorers working for the Worshipful Company of Stillfleeters, more often known simply as the Co. Their home, the alien space station nicknamed Spindle—a sea slug made of undulating black stone, kilometers tall—is a mystery to its own inhabitants. It brims with timespace gates called stiffworks, many of which are already tacked to habitable worlds…

The Stillfleet rules system is unique and highly flexible. We've playtested it with old-school RPG fans, new-school gamers, sci-fi fans, and random passersby. Note, the English Quickstart Rules—fully designed, laid out, and illustrated—have also recently been updated and expanded!

☉

Stillfleet é um novo RPG de mesa sobre explorar espaçonaves arruinadas—destroços—e planetas habitáveis análogos à Terra, sem contato com a Terra por décadas ou séculos—pedras.

Jogadores assumem os papéis de “froteiros”—exploradores e mineradores siderais trabalhando para a Venerável Companhia de Froteiros, mais conhecida como a Companhia, ou CF (Companhia de Froteiros). O lar deles, a estação espacial apelidada de Fuso—imagine uma lesma marinha de pedra preta ondulada com quilômetros de altura—é um mistério para os próprios habitantes. Ainda por cima, o lugar é repleto de portais espaço-temporais chamados trambolhos, muitos dos quais já estão amarrados a mundos habitáveis…

Este Quickstart contém vinte e oito páginas de regras, aliens, cenários e tabelas aleatórias, além de um documento separado com oito Personagens Prontas—todas de classes e espécies diferentes.

O sistema de regras de Stillfleet é único e super flexível. Nós o testamos com jogadores de RPGs old-school, novatos, fãs de sci-fi, e transeuntes aleatórios.

Se você gostar deste Quickstart, nos apoie no Patreon, assine nossa lista de e-mail, siga-nos no Instagram e no Twitter, e junte-se a nós no nosso Discord! Nós vamos lançar novos módulos logo, no processo de compor o Livro Básico.

Muito obrigado a todos os nossos playtesters, incluindo a equipe do fantástico podcast Fun City!

https://stillfleet.itch.io/quickstart